Blurb:
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 P.O. box addresses 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.
Review:
The blurb says
much of it. They came from
everywhere. Some of the families had time
to say goodbye to loved ones back home; some didn’t. Most came from academia. Very few were prepared for the hardship, the
secrecy, the discipline or the red-tape of the military. “Why can’t we name the new puppy
Plutonium? You’re a chemist and it’s on
the Table of Elements. It’s cute.” “What do you mean we can’t say that word?” “I’m Mrs. Fermi. Why do I have to tell people my name is Mrs.
Farmer?” “What do you mean the General
is in charge? I thought the Director was
in charge.” “You said we’d have a
house. This is an army cot in the
community room in a lodge. They say our
house won’t be ready for a week.” “Why
can’t we have a bath tub?”
Eventually the Army
Corps of Engineers built the little houses.
The ladies got used to showers with rationed water instead of
baths. They learned which words they
could and could not use and what they could name their pets—Spot or Fluffy, not
Uranium or Plutonium. They got used to
the thin walls and hearing their neighbors’ beds squeak at night and nine
months later they helped each other get to the hospital when their husbands were
stuck at The Project.
The latter reminded
me of Navy housing in Hawaii. We lived in a four-unit townhouse. ;-D Debbie’s hubby was at sea when she was due,
so we planned that she would knock on Chris’s wall and Chris would knock on
mine. Chris would drive Debbie to the
hospital and I would babysit for Chris. Her hubby was also at sea. We didn’t bother with phones in the middle of
the night on baby-watch. We all kept our windows open and a phone ringing at two a.m. would wake everyone in a three-block radius. But, I digress.
They learned to
ride horses and went on picnics in the desert.
The endured the heat, the dust, the mud, and then gloried in the beauty
when the desert bloomed. The Wives of Los Alamos is a warm,
witty, intimate look at life at Los Alamos and the women who supported the men
who changed the world during The Big One.
It will be released in February.
I highly recommend reserving a copy now.
Length: 240 Pages
Price:
Hardcover:
$17.16
Paperback:
$15.90
Digital:
$9.99
You’ll notice I always include the
publisher’s buy link. That’s because
authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher. Editors and cover artists usually receive
about 5%. When you buy a book from
Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut
and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is
left. So, if a book costs $5.99 at
E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about
$2.40. If you buy the book at Amazon,
the author will receive about $0.83.
Downloading the file from your
computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer
to a USB flash drive. Plug the USB end
of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from
your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory. I actually download my books using “Save As”
to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher,
friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there. That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle,
the books are on my computer. Your
author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.
Thanks
for visiting. RIW
