The Atomic City Girls, Janet Beard
The Atomic City Girls, Janet Beard
10 Rating(s)
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

The Atomic City Girls
A Novel

Author: Janet Beard

Narrator: Xe Sands

Unabridged: 8 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 02/06/2018


Synopsis

In the bestselling tradition of Hidden Figures and The Wives of Los Alamos, comes this riveting novel of the everyday people who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II.“What you see here, what you hear here, what you do here, let it stay here.”In November 1944, eighteen-year-old June Walker boards an unmarked bus, destined for a city that doesn’t officially exist. Oak Ridge, Tennessee has sprung up in a matter of months—a town of trailers and segregated houses, 24-hour cafeterias, and constant security checks. There, June joins hundreds of other young girls operating massive machines whose purpose is never explained. They know they are helping to win the war, but must ask no questions and reveal nothing to outsiders. The girls spend their evenings socializing and flirting with soldiers, scientists, and workmen at dances and movies, bowling alleys and canteens. June longs to know more about their top-secret assignment and begins an affair with Sam Cantor, the young Jewish physicist from New York who oversees the lab where she works and understands the end goal only too well, while her beautiful roommate Cici is on her own mission: to find a wealthy husband and escape her sharecropper roots. Across town, African-American construction worker Joe Brewer knows nothing of the government’s plans, only that his new job pays enough to make it worth leaving his family behind, at least for now. But a breach in security will intertwine his fate with June’s search for answers. When the bombing of Hiroshima brings the truth about Oak Ridge into devastating focus, June must confront her ideals about loyalty, patriotism, and war itself.

About Janet Beard

Born and raised in East Tennessee, Janet Beard moved to New York to study screenwriting at NYU and went on to earn an MFA in creative writing from The New School. Janet lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she is teaching writing, raising a daughter, and working on a new novel.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela M on January 11, 2018

3.5 stars rounded up. The title of this novel is a misnomer in some ways. It’s not just about the the women who worked for the Manhattan Project, called for purposes of security Clinton Engineering Works, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in the 1940’s. It was about men as well, about what the everyday life wa......more

Goodreads review by Lauren on March 12, 2018

Okay. I found what was going on in this book so super interesting from a historical perspective? But from a reader's perspective I was like...how did this get past an agent let alone probably multiple editors and people with brains who read things? It is SO. UNBEARABLY. DULL. It's written about as i......more

Goodreads review by Katie on September 07, 2018

After reading the nonfiction book, The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, I was eager to read more about Oak Ridge and the people who worked there. Unfortunately, not that many books have been written about the people however this historical fiction book......more