Told in first person plural, TaraShea Nesbit’s The Wives
of Los Alamos is an unusual book about an unusual time in American history,
the development of the atomic bomb during WWII. This book needs an unusual
reader, too. Basically, it should be
someone who is willing to embrace the novel’s collective voice – and that does
take some getting used to since it describes the individual experiences as if
they were all shared. Booklist’s
starred review says that what this novel achieves “with no real plot and no
real main character is astounding.” Here is an excerpt:
“Some
of our husbands left first. We watched them disappear into train terminals, through
the doors of unmarked black sedans, down airport runways, and we were left
behind, overwhelmed. We called our friends from the phone booth and they met us
at the train station or at our house with a loaf of bread, or a chicken casserole
and a flask….We wanted to tell them everything we knew and everything we
worried about – how scared we were and how excited. We wanted to ask their advice about what to
bring to the Southwest – dresses, shoes, lotions – but we could not.”
The author, a professor of creative writing and literature,
said that one of her goals in writing this book was to encourage her readers to
learn more about the research efforts for the atomic bomb. She succeeded with me! I explored several articles and books,
including the award winning Bomb by Steve Sheinkin. And while it
helped to have some perspective on the scientific work, I was totally intrigued
by TaraShea Nesbit’s insights into the difficulties faced by these young,
generally well-educated wives who were sent to the desert and kept from fully
sharing in their husbands’ work. Ever since I read a preview copy of The Wives
of Los Alamos, I have been recommending the book to faculty –someone even
ordered it for her own mother-in-law who had been at Oak Ridge, Tennessee
during the 1940s.
I have also asked students to consider The Wives of
Los Alamos for Junior Theme. As Nesbit
says,“It would be great if readers notice parallels between these women and
that time and the present day” and that is exactly one of our essential
questions.
I have mentioned elsewhere suggestions for students that
focus on war and the 20th century. The images of the isolated “town” in The
Wives of Los Alamos had me recalling When the Emperor was Divine,
by Julie Otsuka. In addition, students
could easily choose from (or pair with) recent publications like War
Brides by Helen Bryan (2012) and A Star for Mrs.
Blake by April Smith (2014).
These last two books, while written in a more conventional voice, also
tell the story of groups of women reacting to war-time issues (surviving on the
WWII home front in Britain and WWI Gold Star mothers travelling back to France
in the 1930s, respectively). Overall, I would highly recommend Nesbit’s book, both
for book groups (its amazon page has some discussion questions) and literature
circles. It is sure to spark conversation about moral issues, including privacy
and secrecy, about women’s roles, about forming community at wartime, and about
its own literary style.
