Standing by and Making Do: Women of Wartime Los Alamos

Nine residents describe their lives in Los Alamos while the atomic bomb was being developed. The shock of arrival, housing conditions, security and secrecy, medical care, relations with Pueblo neighbors, and more told with insight and humor. Not Quite Eden is the chapter title for Jane Wilson's part of this book, and it describes life in wartime Los Alamos perfectly. The setting was remote, and there were few amenities. Housing accommodations were meager. Day-to-day lives were governed by security and secrecy, and the nearest neighbors were miles away at San Ildefonso Pueblo. The group of mostly young scientists and their families banded together and shared many good times as well as the bad. They faced hardships with a sense of humor and camaraderie that formed lifelong bonds. The stories offered here were written in 1946 by nine women who had lived those years in isolation. In Wilson's words: This is the story of three years of working and marrying and dying, of giving birth, of getting drunk, of laughing and crying, which culminated in that successful test at the Alamogordo bombing range.
It is the story of Los Alamos.