It’s 1944, and war is raging in Europe and the Pacific. Meanwhile, twelve-year-old Hazel is fighting her own battles somewhere in the New Mexico desert. Life has gotten increasingly complicated and lonely since Dad brought Mom and her to live on the Hill, an ugly place surrounded by a chain-link fence and barbed wire. A brilliant physicist, he is working hard on the Big Mystery, while poor Mom, who has always believed that secrets are bad for the soul, has retreated into a world of her own. A powerful, fictional account of the development of the atomic bomb, this novel offers young readers no simple answers. It does, however, give them plenty to think about as well as an intriguing story populated by a background cast of some of the most important characters of the twentieth century.
It's war-time, and rations have kicked in. Your dad is a scientist, and suddenly you find yourself uprooted from everything you know and moved to a place simply known as "The Hill". It's a town, like most others, only one that most others don't even know exists. There are other kids, a school, a theatre...and military police, security, and many more scientists. As time goes on, your father is home less and less, your mother becomes a shadow of herself, and you find yourself torn between what you thought you knew and what you realize you don't know at all. Welcome to "Where the Ground Meets the Sky".
I originally got this book more for my 12-year-old son, as his class is currently studying WWII. I wasn't sure if he would like it, simply because boys can be funny when the main character is a *girl*. However, he read it fairly quickly and commented several times on how much he liked it. It was intriguing to him that so much of what is written in the book is actually based on real history. I also read the book (it was a quick read) and actually enjoyed it more than I anticipated. The main character, Hazel, is a strong and intelligent girl who is learning more about the world and about people than she ever bargained for. The story itself is well-written, and the addition of the Author's Notes at the end (about WWII and Nuclear Fission) are excellent pieces to the overall book.
This would be a terrific book to have in any school or classroom library, and even a great book for reading aloud in class or as a book club when studying WWII. Definitely a keeper. Comment
