LS 5603 The Green Glass Sea

Klages, Ellen. The Green Glass Sea. New York: Viking, 2006.

ISBN: 0-670-06134-4

The year is 1943 and young Dewey Kerrigan is sent to live with her father on the “Hill,” a secret town in New Mexico. There she meets “Oppie,” who sometimes helps her with her inventions and finds interesting things to make things with at the dump where “good stuff” is thrown out. She is indulged by her mathematician father and encouraged by him to do her experiments. Soon Dewey’s life goes into a routine until suddenly her father has to go to Washington, D. C. to talk with important people. In Washington, her father meets a tragic end and she is taken in by another family on the “Hill,” the Gordons. Before long they take off into the desert where the Trinity site, over 200 miles away, unleashes the “gadget” that makes night look like day and turns the desert into a green glass sea.

The Green Glass Sea is not what I expected. Although it took place in Los Alamos, it wasn’t central to the story. The character driven plot gave good details on the day to day life of those living on the “Hill” and the realities of keeping everything secret. Families couldn’t really talk about their day to each other, the work days could be long and the frustration from this sometimes bubbles to the surface in the action of the characters, especially seen in the relationship of the Gordons and their daughter, Suze. Dewey and her father seem to be the opposite of the frustrated family. Dewey is just happy that she is living with her father and has not been shipped off to live with someone else. The atomic bomb and World War II are secondary to the story but also essential to understand where the people in the story are coming from: They must do it for their country, their President and the kids of the “Hill” seem to understand that their parents are part of the bigger picture.

The November/December 2006 edition of The Horn Book calls it “an intense but accessible page-turner.” If readers want to read more father/daughter stories, The 25 Cent Miracle by Theresa Nelson or The Darkling by Charles Butler amy be what they are looking for. If they are interested in a tale with more Los Alamos/atomic bomb storytelling they may want to try The Gadget by Paul Zindel. There is also a sequel available called White Sands, Red Menace.