BOOKS
LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD LJWorld.com Sunday, May 19, 2013
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POET’S SHOWCASE
In his books, Dan Brown tries to keep his readers guessing
How many colors of love abide in the heart of a Mother? Enough to paint a thousand rainbows across the sky and still not drain her Palette dry.
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By Hillel Italie Associated Press
NEW YORK — Dan Brown sees the world a little differently than the average person. “I wish I could travel for pleasure,” says the author of such scenic blockbusters as “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons,” in which secrets and suspense are combined with a guided Annie Olson, tour of Italy and other student, stops in Western Europe. Lawrence “Everything I see is a po“‘Looking for Alaska’ by tential idea, and I wish I John Green.” could turn that off. Maybe I shouldn’t. But, yes, every little work of art that I see or place that I travel to is a potential idea.” Brown, 48, spoke recently at the midtown Manhattan offices of Random House Inc., where he jokingly imagines setting a novel called “Random Cipher,” with hidden passageways running throughout the building. Brown is a New Hampshire resident spending the week in New York to promote “Inferno,” a return to his beloved continent and a chance, he hopes, to interest readers Rebecca Mardis, in the classic 14th century stay-at-home mom, journey in verse by Dante Lawrence “‘The Sun also Rises’ by that provides the title for his new novel. (Ernest) Hemingway.” “My hope for this book is that people are inspired either to discover or rediscover Dante. And, if all goes well, they will simultaneously appreciate some of the incredible art that Dante has inspired for the last 700 years,” says Brown, who, with “The Da Vinci Code,” helped inspire customized tours of the Louvre, Westminster Abbey and other settings in the novel. Brown’s new book, pubLuke Winchester, lished Tuesday, is already student, high on the best-seller Lawrence “‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ (by lists of Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, a Harper Lee).” position to be expected for an author whose novels have sold 200 million copies worldwide. “The Da Vinci Code” alone has sold more than 80 million
Seth Wenig/AP Photo
AUTHOR DAN BROWN’S NEW BOOK, “INFERNO,” is the latest to feature Brown’s fictional alter ego, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon. copies and ranked Brown with J.K. Rowling among novelists for whose publishers the deadliest sin is spoiling the plot. Brown’s fictional alter ego, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, is once again on the run. Caught up in a struggle to prevent a deadly virus from spreading around the globe, he wakes up in a daze in an Italian hospital at the start of the novel and spends the rest of the book trying to regain his bearings. There’s a love interest — sort of — visits to historical landmarks in Florence, Venice and elsewhere and mysterious codes that allude to passages from Dante. Everything about “Inferno” is a tease, including the way the author has written and promoted it.
Brown makes a point of visiting the locations he describes, and since “The Da Vinci Code” published in 2003, his fans have obsessively tried to discern where his next books might take place and what they’re about. Details of his 2009 novel “The Lost Symbol” emerged thanks to reports that Brown, whose dimpled chin and sandy-colored hair are known to many, had been spending time in Washington, D.C. Counter-espionage became necessary during his European travels for “Inferno.” “Researching now is a double-edged sword,” Brown says. “It’s great because I’ve got access to things I never had access to before. But it’s also more difficult because I’m trying to write in secret on some level and people know who I am. So half of the questions I ask are totally irrelevant to the book, just to keep people guessing.”
Dante was highly critical of the Catholic church and Brown was happy to let readers and critics wonder whether he would renew the controversies of “Angels and Demons” and “The Da Vinci Code,” both of which enraged church officials with such speculations as a marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. But the target in “Inferno” is overpopulation, an issue not raised by Dante even in his crowded rings of Hell. “I’m always trying to keep people guessing,” Brown says. “When people heard I was writing about Dante, they said, ‘Of course, he’s going to be critical of religion.’ ... That would have been too obvious.” Brown does briefly take on the Vatican in “Inferno” for its “meddling in reproductive issues” and he praises Melinda Gates, “a devout Catholic herself,” for raising hundreds of millions of dollars to improve access to birth control. But instead of reviewing church history, Brown has spent the past few years studying the future. He has immersed himself in transhumanism, which advocates the use of technology to alter the mind and body, and has his characters debate the morality of genetics. Among those thanked in his acknowledgements are not just art scholars in Italy, but the “exceptional minds of Dr. George Abraham, Dr. John Treanor and Dr. Bob Helm for their scientific expertise.” The book subscribes to no faith but does contain a moral, from Dante himself: Inaction during a time of crisis is a sin. Overpopulation, Brown says, is an issue so profound that all of us need to ask what should be done. The author himself has not decided. “This is not an activist book. I don’t have any solution,” he says. “I don’t fall on the side of any particular proposed solution. This is just my way of saying, ‘Hello, there’s an issue that people far more skilled than I am in these topics need to address.’”
‘Atomic City’ goes behind Manhattan Project scenes By Gina Webb MCT
Now in their 80s and 90s, the girls of Atomic City are no longer in the dark about the jobs they took during the summer of 1943. Nicole Lopez, But back then, as young employees of the Clinton unemployed, Engineering Works, they Lawrence “‘The Time of my Life’ by knew only a few things for sure about the place they Cecelia Ahern.” would call home for the next two years.
The work site, all 92 square miles of it, had belonged to 1,000 East Tennessee farming families up until 1942, when the government seized 60,000 acres of their land under eminent domain and built a massive industrial complex not found on any map.
Security was paramount: “Appropriate clearances had to be earned, physicals passed, photographs and fingerprints taken, urine collected, and stacks of ‘I swear I won’t talk’ papers signed.” Eli Mardis, You didn’t tell a soul what student, you were doing there or Lawrence “‘A Single Shard’ (by Linda even discuss it with other workers. Sue Park).”
There was a sea of mud that ruined their shoes wherever they went. None of them had the faintest idea that they had signed on with the Manhattan Project and that their job was to collectively enrich the uranium
— codename Tuballoy — that would be used in the atomic bomb. In her meticulously researched and entertaining “The Girls of Atomic City,” Denise Kiernan explores this little known phase of the project’s history through the experiences of several young women who lived and worked in what would one day be known as Oak Ridge, Tenn. Celia, from Pennsylvania coal country, Kattie, from Alabama, Rosemary, from Chicago, and local girls Toni, Jane, Helen, Coleen and Dot would make up a force of secretaries, statisticians, nurses, chemists, technicians and janitors who were told their combined efforts would help win the war. No questions asked. The project welcomed women to its ranks, especially the Appalachian “high school girls ... from rural backgrounds” who were “easy to instruct, (and) did what they were told.” These obedient worker bees soon proved more valuable than anyone could have guessed. The “hillbilly girls” worked more efficiently, “generating more enriched Tuballoy per run” than the scientific teams who “just couldn’t stop fiddling with things.” Kiernan’s book,
the result of seven years of research and interviews with the surviving “girls,” sparkles with their bright, WWII slang and spirit, and takes readers behind the scenes into the hive-like encampments and cubicles where they spent their days and nights. Squeezed into cramped quarters and dealing with wartime shortages, they still managed to wash out their lingerie, dance, send money home, bake biscuits, sneak out after curfew and husband-hunt within the tight-knit community. Despite Orwellian levels of secrecy that included locked gates, lie detector tests and pressure to inform on each other, “women infused the job site with life, their presence effortlessly defying all attempts to control and plan and shape every aspect of day-to-day existence at Oak Ridge.” They made themselves at home, and they bonded. “The military may have been in charge, but the irrepressible life force that is woman — that was well beyond their control.” Hanging onto their jobs meant no questions asked about the knobs they turned, the calutrons they operated, or what was in the pipes they inspected. By contrast, Kiernan provides readers with the hard
science behind the mysterious three reactors at Oak Ridge. The era of “Rosie the Riveter” may have ushered in better opportunities for the women of Oak Ridge, but Kiernan’s subjects have not forgotten their encounters there with sexism, unequal housing and pay, and racism. In the Jim Crow state of Tennessee, black workers found themselves not only segregated from whites but housed in crude “hutments” and separated from their spouses. Perhaps the most dangerous inequity of all was the failure to warn workers of their exposure to radiation. Not only was the government aware of the dangers, but it conducted experiments on 18 subjects, a haunting example of which Kiernan details at length in the story of a black car-wreck survivor given injections of plutonium without his knowledge. “The Girls of Atomic City” brings to light a forgotten chapter in our history that combines a vivid, novelistic story with often troubling science. Though the patriotic women — and men — at Oak Ridge were glad to have helped win WWII, we’re left wondering how many would have refused the jobs had they known what the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, would bring.
A Mother’s Love
Her impassioned care shall ne’re decrease. Her intense devotion will never cease. Hence ... When she journeys on to her heavenly rest she will leave behind her very best to guide our day, to bless each night and fill our dreams with sweet delight. That dulcet thought will permeate throughout our lives as we venerate her precious memory and her compelling care which she wistfully gave through her endless prayer. A mother’s love is beyond all measure. A priceless gift for us to treasure. So we thankfully pause on this solemn day to remind ourselves though she’s gone away that the best parts of her will forever stay. — Gerald Vaughn, of Lawrence
Write poetry? Our Poet’s Showcase features work by area poets. Submit your poetry via email with a subject line of Poet’s Showcase to jralston@ ljworld.com. Your hometown and contact information must be included.
BEST-SELLERS Here are the best-sellers for the week ending May 12, compiled from nationwide data.
Hardcover Fiction 1. Dead Ever After. Charlaine Harris. Ace ($27.95) 2. 12th of Never. Patterson/Paetro. Little, Brown ($27.99) 3. Silken Prey. John Sandford. Putnam ($27.95) 4. The Hit. David Baldacci. Grand Central ($27.99) 5. A Step of Faith. Richard Paul Evans. Simon & Schuster ($19.99) 6. Whiskey Beach. Nora Roberts. Putnam ($27.95) 7. A Delicate Truth. John le Carre. Viking ($28.95) 8. Daddy’s Gone a Hunting. Mary Higgins Clark. Simon & Schuster ($26.99) 9. Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland. Ace Atkins. Putnam ($26.95) 10. Gone Girl. Gillian Flynn. Crown ($25) Hardcover Nonfiction 1. Happy, Happy, Happy. Phil Robertson. Howard Books ($24.99) 2. Lean In. Sheryl Sandberg. Knopf ($24.95) 3. Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. David Sedaris. Little, Brown ($27) 4. The Duck Commander Family. Willie & Korie Robertson. Howard Books ($23.99) 5. Waiting to Be Heard. Amanda Knox. Harper ($28.99) 6. Cooked. Michael Pollan. Penguin ($27.95) 7. It’s All Good. Gwyneth Paltrow. Grand Central ($32) 8. Keep It Pithy. Bill O’Reilly. Crown Archetype ($21.99) 9. Dad Is Fat. Jim Gaffigan. Crown Archetype ($25) 10. The Unstoppables. Bill Schley. Wiley ($24.95)
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