Tara Lynn Masih's favorite fiction and poetry books that navigate the atomic age

I discovered Marianne Wiggins through this stellar novel, which was a National Book Award Finalist.

It’s an epic love story spanning many decades and two wars, and what I especially appreciated was Wiggins’ ability to weave in both the beauty and physics of light, the science of electricity and radiation.

These elements are present when the story begins, and when the story leaves Oak Ridge, where the uranium was enriched, the atomic bomb and fallout continue to follow the couple’s son, aptly named Lightfoot. I felt like I became Lightfoot, navigating my own views and understanding of the atomic age and its moral complexities.

A spare love story is the vehicle for Eleanor, the main character, to grow emotionally and artistically in her adopted desert landscape.

Through an artist’s eyes and the writer’s beautiful prose, I viewed the dry mesas and encountered the mystery of Leo Kavan, who collapses on Eleanor’s property after escaping the confines of “The Hill,” code name for Los Alamos.

I wrote to Gallagher to find out if Leo was based on Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist who conceived the idea of a chain reaction that leads to the invention of the atomic bomb. She replied, "Fiction is so strange, don’t you think? A character starts out based on Leo Szilard and ends up being entirely himself, Leo Kavan." So true.

I appreciate that no one gets off easily in this exquisite novel, appropriate when writing about such complex US history.

I was immediately pulled into this impressive, experimental novel of fragments, written in the collective “we.”

Nesbit chooses to write from the point of view of three wives confronting the complex terrain and atmosphere of Los Alamos. It’s a lyrical, impressionistic condensation of the history of “The Hill” and the clash of domesticity and science.

I love details, and this novel offers an abundance of flotsam and jetsam, revealing everyday life and the desert surroundings for fans who like to gobble up glimpses of the food, birds, flora, cosmetics, drinks, and so on, of this era and place.

The triumphs and horrors of the atom bombs’ power are told from the women’s distant points of view, but this is where the collective “we” becomes more powerful, as the reader, becoming “we,” is included in the wives’ mental and emotional processing of what their husbands built.

I admittedly balked at a dense poetry book.

I’m more of a prose reader. But I soon found myself utterly captivated by this Greek chorus of voices from the Manhattan Project—scientists, wives, receptionists, officers, locals, among others. I admired Canaday’s use of subheadings to keep me organized as many of these characters weave in and out, making multiple appearances. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kitty Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Gen. Groves, Albert Einstein, are just some of the famous voices included.

After reading this arresting, accomplished, impeccably researched collection, I learned that Canaday studied literature and physics in college. In Canaday’s deft hands, through the techniques of poetry and the magic of creating personality, I felt the power of what was being built and the power of conflicting human emotions surrounding the urgent task at hand.

There is much I admire in Hall’s experimental novel revolving around the charismatic, enigmatic father of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer.

Even the book’s title, Trinity, named after the first atomic test that took place in Los Alamos, isn’t easy to pin down. Because Hall makes clear even Oppenheimer doesn’t appear to be fully cognizant of why he named the historic test “Trinity.” That ambiguity shadows all her characters, who are used as prisms in a kaleidoscopic attempt to focus on the many parts of Oppie. 

In my opinion, Hall succeeds in revealing something of his character and mindset that a well-researched biography can’t fully give us. I found Trinity to be a brilliant way to examine, from the human side, the many contradictions behind winning the race to the atomic bomb.