Hill of Secrets

Los Alamos, 1943. Nuclear scientists and their families face the toll of keeping secrets from the world and each other in this gripping, historical wartime novel sure to attract readers of Kate Quinn and Rhys Bowen.

 

When Robert Oppenheimer gathers a group of scientists at the clandestine desert outpost of Los Alamos to create the world’s first nuclear weapon, their families move there as well with no explanation other than to “Stand by. Make do. And above all, don’t ask questions.”

 

Christine Sharp, forced to abandon her art restoration business in New York to support her husband’s career, struggles to reinvent herself.

 

She meets and forges an unlikely friendship with Gertie, the precocious teenage daughter of German-Jewish refugee and prominent physicist Kurt Koppel. Gertie enlists Christine to help her capture the heart of Jimmy, a shy soldier, and to deal with parents haunted by their past.

 

Kurt, anguished by what the Nazis have done to his family and bent on defeating them, carries burdens he longs to share but cannot confide in his wife ― leading him to find comfort elsewhere. 

 

In this immersive novel of suppressed yearning, irrepressible love and wracking guilt, the lives of fictional characters intertwine with real-life figures. Like Oppenheimer and his team, they must contend with the moral questions and aftermath of creating the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.