Although the girls do not get along at first (Suze draws a chalk line in her room to separate their personal spaces), they gradually learn to rely on each other for comfort, support and companionship. The two outcasts reluctantly come together when Dewey's father is called away to Washington, D.C., and Dewey temporarily moves in with Suze's family. Her classmate Suze is also often snubbed and has been nicknamed "Truck" by her classmates (" 'cause she's kind of big and likes to push people around," explains one boy). Eleven-year-old Dewey, the daughter of a math professor, is shunned by the other girls at the camp due to her passionate interest in mechanics and her fascination with the dump, which holds all sorts of mechanisms and tools she can use for her projects. Writing from the points of view of two displaced children, she successfully recreates life at Los Alamos Camp, where scientists and mathematicians converge with their families to construct and test the first nuclear bomb. Klages makes an impressive debut with an ambitious, meticulously researched novel set during WWII.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |