The Green Glass Sea

I started reading the winner of the 2007 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages, today at lunch. This story takes place in Los Alamos, New Mexico beginning in 1943 where readers meet Dewey and Suze, two very different young girls whose parents are scientists in the Los Alamos labs. The girls have no idea the importance or ramifications of the top secret project, but have learned to adjust to the complete secrecy required of everyone who lives there.

Currently about half way finished with this book, I am enjoying the ease and flow of Klages writing style. Dewey, the only daughter of a single father who has been transferred to Los Alamos, is an engaging math nerd with a disability. She defies gender specifications by being a girl who likes math, likes to tinker and build her own projects, and has little interest in "girly" things. Suze, a loner in her own way, is trying hard to fit in with the other girls. Her parents both work on the project and her mother, a "stinker" (chemist) knows Dewey's father from college. The girls know each other from school, but Suze has little time for "screwy Dewey."

Knowing how the Los Alamos project will change the world as Suze and Dewey know it, I look forward to finding out how these very different girls, and their families, cope with the ultimate ramifications of "the gadget."

Update: 1/16/07

As the book moves nearer the final Manhattan Project test at Los Alamos, the relationship between Dewey and Suze begins to subtly alter. Dewey's father is sent on a secret business trip and she moves in with Suze's family. The girls live under a negotiated truce before slowly becoming friends, a transition that is believably handled when Suze (aka Truck) learns she is the target of the same cruel jokes as Dewey. In quick order Dewey's father is killed in a hit and run accident in Washington and residents of "the hill" learn a test date has been set for "the gadget."

Klages captures the glee scientists feel at a job well done and almost carnival atmosphere surrounding the test and it's ultimate success. However, she also subtly details dread felt by the same scientists as they discuss amongst themselves serious repercussions and use of the bomb. As Suze's dad says, "The genie's out of the bottle, Terry. No way to put it back now." (The Green Glass Sea, p. 230). While much of the discussion concerning the Manhattan Project is done by calling it "the gadget," it does not detract from the serious issue at hand. What it does is illustrate the 'open' secrecy demanded of people living and working at Los Alamos during this time.

Klages takes her characters to "Trinity," the spot where the bomb was detonated. Suze and Dewey take a piece of green glass from the site, a phenomenon occurring as crystals were formed after the blast. I found this extremely interesting as the joy of finding the crystals were juxtaposed against the dangerous radiation emitted by the crystals themselves; a fact aptly portrayed by Suze's Dad's Geiger counter. The story ends as the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima and the characters are moving on with their lives, unaware of what has happened.

The dust jacket's back flap notes Klages is working on a follow-up novel to The Green Glass Sea "tentatively titles White Sands, Red Menace."

Tags: The Green Glass Sea, Ellen Klages, Juvenile fiction, Juvenile historical fiction