Selected Writings

"Invisible Sister" is one of the short-short stories I've been writing recently when taking breaks from my long fiction projects.

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The two stories in My God What Have We Done? both have their starting points in Pauline and Clifford’s visit to the Los Alamos National Laboratory on their honeymoon, fifty years after the birth of the atomic bomb. From there, the story of the newlyweds’ deteriorating marriage continues. By chapter four, the Los Alamos storyline emerges as a distinct narrative with a life of its own, recounting the development of the bomb under the direction of Robert Oppenheimer.

The first of these excerpts is from Chapter 25, "Boom Town," which opens with a Los Alamos husband's late-night attempt to round up a doctor to tend to his wife, who has gone into labor. The birth rate had become a matter of concern for General Groves, the Army's overseer of the site.

The second is from Chapter 19, "Forced Labor." Pauline, near the end of her second pregnancy,  has just arrived at the office of her midwife, Margaret Hurley, for what she anticipates will be a routine exam.

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