... is written in the unusual first person plural voice. The voice is that of the collective spouses of the scientists drafted to invent the atomic bomb, the weapon that would ultimately end the Second World War.  Los Alamos was barely a settlement when the families began arriving on the desolate mesa north of Santa Fe, N.M., in 1943. The scientists’ wives made the best of extreme physical hardship, enduring inadequate housing, lack of sufficient water, and poor access to most creature comforts.  Throughout the book, though, the overriding hardship was the secrecy — no one knew what was happening in The Lab...