In 1943 scientists were assembled in the New Mexico desert to push the boundaries of knowledge, creating a “gadget” to bring the war in Europe and the Pacific to a horrifically violent end. Their wives had been teachers, writers, housewives and scientists from New Jersey, Nebraska, France, England and Germany. They accompanied their husbands into this harsh landscape under Dr Oppenheimer’s direction. Tarashea Nesbit gives voice to the women as a collective, a group who shared their intimacies and petty quarrels, trying to create a community from their ever-expanding town’s population. Their biggest achievement, beyond bringing up children in houses that had unreliable water supply, and a commissary that made food shopping a daily run of the gauntlet, was the survival of their families in “this wild military camp”. This is a story that will haunt you, as though the ghosts of the desert replayed the women’s lives long after they had returned to their home towns with husbands, who were deeply marked by their achievement.
