Very interesting account of a woman who settled in the Los Alamos area and became a friend to the local Indians and to the scientists who came to work on the Atomic bomb project. ( )

This is an biography of Edith Warner. Edith achieved neither fame nor fortune during her life. For most of her adult life she lived in New Mexico, in a small house on the edge of the San Ildefonso Pueblo Reservation. Yet, this book by Peggy Pond Church is the first of three that have been written about her.

She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1893, and moved to New Mexico during her twenties, and died there in 1951. Like many other people, she moved to the American Southwest for health reasons. Determined to remain there, she accepted a very low paying job as the Station Agent at a remote mail and supply drop for the Denver&Rio Grande Railroad. The small building by Otowi Bridge, which served as train station and home, also became a small store for people passing to and from local mountains. And the store eventually was turned it into a “tearoom” for which Edith became well known.

The author, Peggy Pond Church was a friend and neighbor of Edith's in New Mexico. Ms. Church grew up in New Mexico, and was living at the Los Alamos Ranch School just a few miles from that house at Otowi Bridge at the time that Edith arrived.

This book uses both Edith's notes and letters, and Ms. Church’s personal journal and recollection to tell the story of Edith Warner. Although Edith published some magazine articles of her own, and had started but never finished an autobiography, Ms. Church’s personal accounts provide important background that is missing from Edith's letters and other writing. Ms. Church was a writer and poet and this book is very well written.

In the 1940s, the site of the Los Alamos Ranch School was taken over by the government in World War II for the development of the A-Bomb. Due to the remoteness of Los Alamos, Edith's nearby tearoom became a popular dining spot for scientists and others living in Los Alamos. Edith Warner became friends with many famous physicists such as Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Neils Bohr and others who enjoyed frequent dinner party's at her tearoom. At the same time, she was an even a closer friend to many Indians on the Pueblo Reservation. As the author writes in the Foreword,

“Through the Indians she was in touch with a wisdom that has been almost forgotten. The scientists who took our place at Los Alamos became her friends. It was one of the strange aspects of Edith Warner's fate that brought these men and their wives from many nations to gather around her table. … Edith's house became a kind of sanctuary for them in the tense years before Hiroshima.”

and she quotes a letter from physicist Neils Bohr,

“The memory of Edith Warner, a noble personalty, and of the enchanting environment in which she lived, will always be cherished by everyone who met her.”

This book should convince the reader of what an remarkable person she was - even as you wish for more details which are impossible simply because she was such a private person. And it will certainly you wish you could have met her. ( )

Fine little book about Edith Warner, who lived at the intersection of the Atomic age and the Stone age where the river makes a noise! ( )

Good short book on Edith Warner who lived near Los Alamos and how she was friends with the local Indians and the scientists of Los Alamos. ( )