Their average age was twenty-five. They came from Berkeley, Cambridge, Paris, London and Chicago - and arrived in New Mexico ready for adventure or at least resigned to it. But hope quickly turned to hardship in the desolate military town where everything was a secret, including what their husbands were doing at the lab. They lived in barely finished houses with a P.O. Box for an address, in a town wreathed with barbed wire, all for the benefit of 'the project' that didn't exist as far as the greater world was concerned. They were constrained by the words they couldn't say out loud, the letters they couldn't send home, the freedom they didn't have. Though they were strangers, they joined together - babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up. But then 'the project' was unleashed and even bigger challenges faced the women of Los Alamos, as they struggled with the burden of their contribution towards the creation of the most destructive force in mankind's history - the atomic bomb. Contentious, gripping and intimate, The Wives of Los Alamos is a personal tale of one of the most momentous events in our history.

A novel told in the collective voices of the wives of the men who created the atom bomb. Though they were strangers, they joined together, but then the 'project' was unleashed and even bigger challenges faced the women of Los Alamos as they struggled with the burden of their contribution towards the creation of the most destructive force in mankind's history. 'Hypnotic and filled with elegiac details' Madeline Miller Now in paperback.

The story is told by all of the women - not queued up as an oral history , but together in unison as one haunting, communal voice . In the hands of a less certain writer, the narrative style might become grating, but Nesbit pulls it off with impressive control. Lulled by the voice, we know that offstage the historic work is being done . Because we already know the big story, the wives' tale - this diverse, incongruous ensemble - becomes that much more interesting