The Atomic City Girls by Janet Beard


 

    "The Atomic City Girls" is a Historical Fiction novel by Janet Beard. The novel begins with a prologue to give the reader some background, where the government has started buying people's homes and forcing them to leave immediately. Their goal was to build Oak Ridge - a sector of the Manhattan Project - in the state of Tennessee. The men and women who were recruited to work here were also strictly held to privacy, just like those working on the Manhattan project in New Mexico. The story focuses on June Walker, a young farm girl from Tennessee. She is hired to work at Oak Ridge only a year after she graduated high school, and she is doing a job she does not really know the purpose of- she only knows that she is to operate a machine, and she can never tell anyone about her work or where she lives. Throughout the novel, she struggles with romance, homesickness, and of course her curiosity about the project. June's story at Oak Ridge is based on the women who worked there in the 1940's. 

 I was interested in this book because I loved "Oppenheimer"; and thought it would be a good companion to it. I also did not know much about what went on at Oak Ridge myself, and as a history teacher I figured this would be a good way to expand my knowledge on the topic. I feel this would be a great book for Modern U.S. history classes, Ethics classes, or for any teacher wanting to suggest something to a teenage girl. It is a really great story and I will probably be reading it again someday. 

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