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In the spirit of The Aviator's Wife and Loving Frank, this resonant debut spans the years from World War II through the Vietnam War to tell the story of a woman whose scientific ambition is caught up in her relationships with two very different men.
For Meridian Wallace—and many other smart, driven women of the 1940s—being ambitious meant being an outlier. Ever since she was a young girl, Meridian had been obsessed with birds, and she was determined to get her PhD, become an ornithologist, and make her mother's sacrifices to send her to college pay off. But she didn't expect to fall in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone. When he's recruited to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to take part in a mysterious wartime project, she reluctantly defers her own plans and joins him. What began as an exciting intellectual partnership devolves into a "traditional" marriage. And while the life of a housewife quickly proves stifling, it's not until years later, when Meridian meets a Vietnam veteran who opens her eyes to how the world is changing, that she realizes just how much she has given up. The repercussions of choosing a different path, though, may be too heavy a burden to bear. Elizabeth Church's stirring debut novel about ambition, identity, and sacrifice will ring true to every woman who has had to make the impossible choice between who she is and who circumstances demand her to be.
"Oh, what an incandescent debut! . . . Church follows one extraordinary woman who is brave enough to challenge the times, take defiant wing, and chart her own extraordinary flight path . . . I never wanted the story to end." —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You
Set in the 1940s through the 1970s, it tells the story of Meridian Wallace, a woman interested in becoming an ornithologist to study crows. She meets Alden, a brilliant physics professor and they fall in love, marry, and eventually move to NM so he can work on the atomic bomb. However, this leaves Meridian unfulfilled, as she had to abandon her studies at U of Chicago. She later meets Clay, a free love geologist, who becomes Meridian's lover. He shows her things and makes her feel things she never experienced. However, she remains devoted to Alden. Beautifully written, and a real look at what women endured in the 1940s and 1950s - succumbing to their husband's dreams and often abandoning their own. ( )
“We have to take flight. It's not given to us, served up on a pretty, parsley-bordered platter. We have to take wing. Was I brave enough to do that? Or would I be content to remain earthbound?”
4.5 stars
I relished this story of Meridian (Meri) Whetstone -- her life, her marriage, her career, and her choices. While I questioned some of the actions of the characters, this is a book which felt very authentic. The plot focuses on the outcome of Meri's deicisons when she tables her dreams, talent, and promising career to follow her husband to the Los Alamos labs during the 1940s .
Church's gorgeously descriptive writing (and all the bird references) made this a top book for me. ( )
A book that explains my own life events like no other
This story, beautifully told, is the story of so many women brought up in the patriarchal social order that was taken for granted at one time, and is threatening to be imposed again in 2017 America. I want to sit quietly now with what I read, examine the ways in which I was culpable in the stifling of my intellect for so many years, my acquiescence because that was easier. A novel that makes me examine myself does not come along that often, so I say, brava! ( )
Meridian, a bright student, sets aside her ambition to become a scientist and follows her husband to Los Alamos where he will work on the Manhattan Project. There she meets similarly bright but sidetracked women who are resigned to live in the shadows of their spouses. To fill her days, she goes to ladies' coffees and, on the side, studies a flock of crows in a nearby canyon, learning much about human behavior through their actions. A chance encounter with a returned Vietnam war veteran/graduate student introduces her to free love, the Women's Movement, her awakening sexuality, and her right to pursue her early dreams. Readers who have become adults through the '60's and '70's will identify with Meridian's journey to a very satisfying ending. ( )
This book seemed like it should have been a perfect fit for me - it features New Mexico, history, science, birds, m and written by a New Mexican author - how could it go wrong. But it went so gloriously wrong; so very, very, very, very wrong. I'm honestly stunned by the favorable reviews of this book, especially from the women of LT.
Titularly about the people and events of the Manhattan Project, particularly the women there, it boils down to a badly composed bodice ripper. One of the difficulties is that it appeared the author wanted the book to fit into several different marketing boxes, so that it's just a mess of everything, not sure of itself in any one place. Things looked bleak for the story when the main character starts up an affair - and I don't really care one way or another whether a character engages in extramarital affairs - in an effort to break free from the quotidian and life-sucking nature of her life. Good for her, I say. But then descriptions followed that are better placed in Penthouse Forum, and probably better written there, as well. Honestly, do we really need to know what male body crack a female puts her tongue? Or how it tasted? This is one I'd like to have pitched directly out the window while uttering several of the curse words I'd been reading in the pages.
Not Recommended! 1 bone, simply for having thought of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project, if only in passing. ( )
How have all those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organisation to another part, and to the conditions of life, and of one distinct organic being to another being, been perfected? —Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Los Alamos is in a restricted airspace reservation covered by an Executive order, dated May 23, 1950. This airspace cannot be penetrated except by authority of the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission]. Historically permission has been refused except for the chartered [AEC flights of official visitors and project personnel]. —from the report of the Hearing before the Subcommittee on Communities of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Congress of the United States, Eighty-Sixth Congress, First Session on Community Problems of Los Alamos, December 2, 1959
Dedication
To Frances Salman Koenig, this novel's strongest champion, and To my brother Alan A. Church, for his steadfastness
First words
In early January of 2011, forty-five hundred red-winged blackbirds fell dead from the Arkansas skies.
Quotations
Last words
Disambiguation notice
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Original language
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Fiction.
Literature.
Historical Fiction.
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In the spirit of The Aviator's Wife and Loving Frank, this resonant debut spans the years from World War II through the Vietnam War to tell the story of a woman whose scientific ambition is caught up in her relationships with two very different men.
For Meridian Wallace—and many other smart, driven women of the 1940s—being ambitious meant being an outlier. Ever since she was a young girl, Meridian had been obsessed with birds, and she was determined to get her PhD, become an ornithologist, and make her mother's sacrifices to send her to college pay off. But she didn't expect to fall in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone. When he's recruited to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to take part in a mysterious wartime project, she reluctantly defers her own plans and joins him. What began as an exciting intellectual partnership devolves into a "traditional" marriage. And while the life of a housewife quickly proves stifling, it's not until years later, when Meridian meets a Vietnam veteran who opens her eyes to how the world is changing, that she realizes just how much she has given up. The repercussions of choosing a different path, though, may be too heavy a burden to bear. Elizabeth Church's stirring debut novel about ambition, identity, and sacrifice will ring true to every woman who has had to make the impossible choice between who she is and who circumstances demand her to be.
"Oh, what an incandescent debut! . . . Church follows one extraordinary woman who is brave enough to challenge the times, take defiant wing, and chart her own extraordinary flight path . . . I never wanted the story to end." —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You
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Book description
For Meridian Wallace--and many other smart, driven women of the 1940s--being ambitious meant being an outlier. Ever since she was a young girl, Meridian had been obsessed with birds, and she was determined to get her PhD, become an ornithologist, and make her mother’s sacrifices to send her to college pay off. But she didn’t expect to fall in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone. When he’s recruited to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to take part in a mysterious wartime project, she reluctantly defers her own plans and joins him.
What began as an exciting intellectual partnership devolves into a “traditional” marriage. And while the life of a housewife quickly proves stifling, it’s not until years later, when Meridian meets a Vietnam veteran who opens her eyes to how the world is changing, that she realizes just how much she has given up. The repercussions of choosing a different path, though, may be too heavy a burden to bear.
Elizabeth Church’s stirring debut novel about ambition, identity, and sacrifice will ring true to every woman who has had to make the impossible choice between who she is and who circumstances demand her to be.
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Beautifully written, and a real look at what women endured in the 1940s and 1950s - succumbing to their husband's dreams and often abandoning their own. (