Many thanks to Net Galley and Bloomsbury USA for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
This book will be published February 25, 2014.
Book Synopsis(via Goodreads):
Their average age was twenty-five. They came from Berkeley, Cambridge, Paris, London, Chicago—and arrived in New Mexico ready for adventure, or at least resigned to it. But hope quickly turned to hardship as they were forced to adapt to a rugged military town where everything was a secret, including what their husbands were doing at the lab. They lived in barely finished houses with a P.O. box for an address in a town wreathed with barbed wire, all for the benefit of a project that didn’t exist as far as the public knew. Though they were strangers, they joined together—adapting to a landscape as fierce as it was absorbing, full of the banalities of everyday life and the drama of scientific discovery.
And while the bomb was being invented, babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up, and Los Alamos gradually transformed from an abandoned school on a hill into a real community: one that was strained by the words they couldn’t say out loud, the letters they couldn’t send home, the freedom they didn’t have. But the end of the war would bring even bigger challenges to the people of Los Alamos, as the scientists and their families struggled with the burden of their contribution to the most destructive force in the history of mankind.
And while the bomb was being invented, babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up, and Los Alamos gradually transformed from an abandoned school on a hill into a real community: one that was strained by the words they couldn’t say out loud, the letters they couldn’t send home, the freedom they didn’t have. But the end of the war would bring even bigger challenges to the people of Los Alamos, as the scientists and their families struggled with the burden of their contribution to the most destructive force in the history of mankind.
This insomniac's opinion:
I truly loved this story. It took a chapter or two to acclimate to the first person plural that the story is written in, but I feel that it really lent a unique perspective to the story which spoke of both the unity and the discord amongst this community of women. It was a moving story of sacrifice, secrecy and ultimately, both pride and shame at being a part of the making of the first atomic bomb. I lost myself in the lives of these women and will never forget their stories.
Worth staying up all night to read?
Yes!
Rating: 4 stars
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