The Women of Oak Ridge

Shocklee (All We Thought We Knew) unspools a gripping dual-timeline historical centered on the Manhattan Project. In 1944, Mae Willet lands a job as a maintenance clerk at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tenn., a secret arm of the Manhattan Project that enriches uranium. Mae and other administrative workers are kept in the dark about the plant’s purpose and barred from disclosing anything about their work to others. After her roommate and coworker, Sissy, starts dating a suspicious man, Mae and Sissy get embroiled in a plot that involves split allegiances, government secrets, arson, and possibly worse. In 1979, PhD student Laurel Willet travels to Tennessee to interview her aunt Mae as part of her doctoral thesis on the Manhattan Project. Aunt Mae is unwilling to talk, but Laurel is determined to uncover her role at Oak Ridge—especially after finding the ID badge of another Oak Ridge employee in Mae’s old things—and help Mae find healing through God. Shocklee’s sympathetic characters add plenty of depth to the action-packed plot, and the atmospheric renderings of an anxious wartime America are especially vivid. Fans of Christian historicals will be captivated from first page to last. (Sept.)