Wives of Los Alamos (Nesbit)

The Wives of Los Alamos:  A Novel
TaraShea Nesbit, 2014
Bloomsbury USA
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781620405031


Summary
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.

The Wives of Los Alamos is a novel that sheds light onto one of the strangest and most monumental research projects in modern history. It's a testament to a remarkable group of women who carved out a life for themselves, in spite of the chaos of the war and the shroud of intense secrecy. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1981
• Born—Dayton, Ohio, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Washington University in St. Louis; Ph.D.,
   University of Colorado (in progress)
• Currently—lives in Boulder, Colorado


TaraShea Nesbit’s writing has been featured in the Iowa Review, Quarterly West, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other literary journals. She teaches creative writing and literature courses at the University of Denver and the University of Washington in Tacoma and is the nonfiction editor of Better: Culture & Lit.

A graduate of the M.F.A. program at Washington University in St. Louis, TaraShea is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Denver. She lives in Boulder, Colorado, and is married to a scientist. (From the publisher and USA Today.)

Book Reviews
TaraShea Nesbit’s debut novel breathes life into the domestic side of this story.... Quietly revealing, The Wives of Los Alamos offers an unusual glimpse into a singular community where war, science, and home life collided.
Boston Globe


It becomes easy to slip into the rhythms of Nesbit's prose and imagine the dusty, sunbaked mesas of Los Alamos, where the wives—uprooted from their families, their mail censored, not really sure what their husbands were doing—managed to create a vibrant community of their own.
Entertainment Weekly


A great story.... [Nesbit] evokes the women’s days in lyrical, hypnotic detail: the mountains’ stark beauty, the sand penetrating every corner of the jerry-built houses, the infectious pettiness of people stuck together in close quarters, the sudden bursts of patriotism.
People


(Starred review.) The author’s writing—by turns touching, confiding, and matter-of-fact—perfectly captures the commonalities of the hive mind while also emphasizing the little things that make each wife dissimilar from the pack. This effect intensifies once the nature of the Los Alamos project is revealed and the men and their families grapple with the burden of their new creation. Engrossing, dense, and believable.
Publishers Weekly


Nesbit uses a collective "we" to narrate her story, allowing her to explore contradictory points of view among the women. Novelist Julie Otsuka used this literary device with dramatic effect in The Buddha in the Attic, and readers may find echoes of her distinctive style here.... [W]ell-researched and fast-paced novel...important subject matter and...vivid storytelling. —Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA
Library Journal


(Starred review.) [T]his novel...achieves with no real plot and no real main character [yet] is astounding.... We meet the key figures of Los Alamos but from the perspective of women on the outside of their historic work on the Gadget.... Nesbit brings alive questions of war and power that dog us to this day. —Lynn Weber
Booklist


(Starred review.) The scientists' wives tell the story of daily life in Los Alamos during the creation of the atomic bomb, in Nesbit's lyrical, captivating historical debut.... While the husbands and a few women scientists spend the bulk of their time in the "Tech Area," the wives, many highly educated with abandoned careers, cope with their new domestic realities... There are rumors of musical beds....as time passes in this insular world. Nesbit artfully...creat[es] an emotional tapestry of time and place.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The Wives of Los Alamos is narrated in first person plural. While individual women are mentioned, the wives speak as a group. How does this affect your understanding of them and their story? Do you come to know any of them as individuals? What was your emotional response to this stylistic choice?

2. From the very beginning, the town of Los Alamos is one defined by secrets. Who is keeping information secret from whom? What type of information does each group within the community have access to and how does that information give them power?

3. Where do you see issues of race and class come up in the novel? Do race and class differences manifest themselves differently in this small, isolated community than they do in the world at large?

4. The wives of Los Alamos are often pregnant, their families steadily growing. What does it mean to be a mother in this community? What do you think it would be like to grow up in that environment, only to move back into the world after the bombs had been dropped?

5. In the days approaching the test of the atomic bomb, the husbands become increasingly distant. The wives are quick to wonder if the men have taken a lover, or if perhaps, in their isolation, they’ve let themselves go too much. How does this reflect back on the wives’ roles in Los Alamos? And in their marriages?

6. At times the wives seem to use their sexuality as a means of gathering information or making a social statement. Where do you see that come up in the book? In these instances, are they acting individually or as a group?

7. When the wives watch the test bomb explode, they think, "Our town had made something as strong and bright as the sun." Has this been a communal creation? If it has been, what does it suggest about the accountability of all of the residents of the town going forward?

8. Regarding the creation of the bomb, the wives note, "On this place formed millions of years ago by a huge eruption, our husbands had just made their own." What is suggested in that comparison about the forces of creation and destruction? Was the bomb part of an on-going cycle, or was it a disruption of one?

9. The wives have very different responses to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What are those responses? Are you able to relate to all of them, or are there some you have trouble understanding?

10. Nesbit often mixes mundane details of everyday life with the monumental events discussed in the novel. For example, after the bombs are dropped in Japan, the wives exclaim, "You can build a bomb but you cannot fix a leaky faucet!" How does this mixture of the quotidian with the tremendous change your understanding of these people and events?

11. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the community in Los Alamos becomes the focus of national media. How do the wives respond to this attention?

12. In the final days of the project, the Director, J. Robert Oppenheimer, says to the community, "If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and values." Do you agree with that statement? What do you think the responsibility of a scientist is to society at large? Who should act as custodian to "the greatest possible power to control the world"?

13. Oppenheimer ends his speech to the scientists and wives by saying, "A day may come when men and women will curse the name Los Alamos." Do you curse the name? Why or why not?

14. The scientists tell their wives shortly after Oppenheimer’s speech, "The world knowing the bomb exists is the best hope for peace." What do they mean by that? Do you agree?

15. As the community of Los Alamos disperses, the wives observe: "Saying good-bye to our friends was not just saying good-by to them, we were saying good-bye to part of ourselves." What are they leaving behind as they leave Los Alamos? How has this experience changed them?
(Questions from author's website.)

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