It's 1944, and war is raging in Europe and the Pacific. Meanwhile, twelve-year-old Hazel is fighting her own battles somewhere in the New Mexico desert. Life has gotten increasingly complicated and lonely since Dad brought Mom and her to live on the Hill, an ugly place surrounded by a chain-link fence and barbed wire. A brilliant physicist, he is working hard on the Big Mystery, while poor Mom, who has always believed that secrets are bad for the soul, has retreated into a world of her own. A powerful, fictional account of the development of the atomic bomb, this novel offers young readers no simple answers. It does, however, give them plenty to think about as well as an intriguing story populated by a background cast of some of the most important characters of the twentieth century.
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"Pretty complex characters covering the same ground as The Green Glass Sea but with more fallout."
— Jane (4 out of 5 stars)
“Davis takes youngsters to a setting seldom covered in their literature, 1944 Los Alamos, New Mexico, where scientists are developing the atomic bomb…There are no easy answers—as both Davies and Durante clearly demonstrate in this worthwhile story.”
— AudioFile“This suspenseful story successfully captures the tensions of a volatile period in American history as the atomic bomb was being developed. Readers will be left with plenty to think about and no simple answers.”
— School Library Journal“As Hazel makes a friend, discovers a secret, and grapples with her own fiery intelligence, a portion of American history that wasn't so very long ago takes on shape and reality.”
— Booklist" this book was really good i literally read in an hour lol "
— Sequoia, 9/13/2013" This book was about world war 2 "
— annabanana, 3/29/2013Jacqueline Davies is an award-winning author of numerous children’s books. Her works include Where the Ground Meets the Sky, The Boy Who Drew Birds: A Story of James Audubon, The Night is Singing, and the Lemonade War series. Davies has won a number of awards for her work and was included on the New York Library’s Best Books list. She has a BA in creative writing from Brown University and lives in Needham, Massachusetts with her three children.
Emily Durante has been narrating audiobooks for over ten years and is also an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning audiobook director. She has been acting since the age of seven and has performed in a number of stage productions at the professional, collegiate, and regional levels.