The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit *****

The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit is a beautiful prose-poem written in the first-person plural covering the development of the atomic bomb during the years 1943-1945…from the perspective of the wives. “We married men just like our fathers, or nothing like them, or only the best parts.”

The book focusses on four groups: the wives, the scientists, the military, and the indigenous people.

The wives, at the center of the action, were diverse, but mostly European, educated, and forceful. Though the military nominally controlled everything, and their husbands were occupied by research and development, they found ways to get what they wanted, including jobs, recreation, education for their children, domestic help, and fresh vegetables. Much of their activities included observing the others.

The scientists come across like stereotypical scientists.

“Many of them cared a lot about utility and nothing for appearances. If it were their choice our bookshelves, dining room chairs, and coffee tables would all be made of industrial materials like steel. Thankfully for us, these materials were difficult to come by during the war.”

For a while, they were proud of what their husbands had accomplished (atomic bombs). When they watched the news, they told their children “That’s what your father made” while thinking, “Our husbands who could not repair a clogged shower drain.” “Our husbands who could not swim or drive a car.”

The military was stuck at Los Alamos. Most wish they were where the action was in Europe or the Pacific. The wives had little to do with most of the military, except for some harmless flirting and petty conflicts with the WACs who ran the commissary, housing office, and almost everything else. There was one exception.

“We had a fondness for the engineering division.” “They were men with undergraduate degrees.” “Surely, they annoyed the MPs and sergeants with…their thick glasses, their gangly bodies with paunchy stomachs. And when they marched on weekends with the rest of the military, they were placed in the back of the caboose, and each of their steps was miraculously out of sync with the others.”

Indigenous women provided domestic help. The wives made friends with these women. “We tutored their sons in English after school and they taught us how to make more northern New Mexico dishes—tortillas, posole, and corn cooked in the Indian way. They learned to make our peanut butter sandwiches, but we never learned the delicious secret of their…fried bread.”

An evocative story of life at Los Alamos during World War II. Not an introduction to the development of the atomic bomb, but a beautiful supplement.

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