The Atomic City Girls

“Focuses on the little-known realities behind the Manhattan Project […] Readers who enjoyed Martha Hall Kelly’s Lilac Girls will appreciate this glimpse into the beliefs and attitudes that shaped America during World War II.”— Library Journal An Internationally bestselling novel 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 herewhat you hear herewhat you do herelet it stay here.” In November 1944eighteen-year-old June Walker boards an unmarked busdestined for a city that doesn’t officially exist. Oak RidgeTennessee has sprung up in a matter of months—a town of trailers and segregated houses24-hour cafeteriasand constant security checks. ThereJune joins hundreds of other young girls operating massive machines whose purpose is never explained. They know they are helping to win the warbut must ask no questions and reveal nothing to outsiders. The girls spend their evenings socializing and flirting with soldiersscientistsand workmen at dances and moviesbowling alleys and canteens. June longs to know more about their top-secret assignment and begins an affair with Sam Cantorthe young Jewish physicist from New York who oversees the lab where she works and understands the end goal only too wellwhile her beautiful roommate Cici is on her own mission: to find a wealthy husband and escape her sharecropper roots. Across townAfrican-American construction worker Joe Brewer knows nothing of the government’s plansonly that his new job pays enough to make it worth leaving his family behindat 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 focusJune must confront her ideals about loyaltypatriotismand war itself. \