Gordon had shooed the girls to bed early, then woke them before dawn for a hike with some of the other wives, many of whom also had jobs and titles other than Mrs. Dewey's mom hadn't been around since she was a baby. They were both scientists, like Papa, and their daughter Suze was about the same age as Dewey. When he was sent to Washington, she came to live with the Gordons. Dewey Kerrigan noticed that a lot of the usual faces were missing from the dining hall at the Los Alamos lodge, and everyone seemed tense, even more tense than usual.ĭewey and her father had come to the Hill two years before, when she was eight.

Gordon was gone for the first two weeks in July. If the book is a little slow-moving at times, the author provides much insight into the controversies surrounding the making of the bomb and brings to life the tensions of war experienced by adults and children alike. Details about the era-popular music, pastimes and products-add authenticity to the story as do brief appearances of some historic figures including Robert Oppenheimer, who breaks the news to Dewey that her father has been killed in a car accident. Although the girls do not get along at first (Suze draws a chalk line in her room to separate their personal spaces), they gradually learn to rely on each other for comfort, support and companionship. The two outcasts reluctantly come together when Dewey's father is called away to Washington, D.C., and Dewey temporarily moves in with Suze's family.

Her classmate Suze is also often snubbed and has been nicknamed 'Truck' by her classmates (' 'cause she's kind of big and likes to push people around,' explains one boy).

Eleven-year-old Dewey, the daughter of a math professor, is shunned by the other girls at the camp due to her passionate interest in mechanics and her fascination with the dump, which holds all sorts of mechanisms and tools she can use for her projects. Writing from the points of view of two displaced children, she successfully recreates life at Los Alamos Camp, where scientists and mathematicians converge with their families to construct and test the first nuclear bomb. Klages makes an impressive debut with an ambitious, meticulously researched novel set during WWII.

The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages