undefined

An Amazon Best Book of January 2016: With any luck, the publication of The Longest Night will signal the beginning of a new kind of historical novel: one that takes not a real-life character but an incident--here, a little known nuclear accident--and imagines the lives of the people who lived through it. Set in the late 1950s, this strikingly assured debut tells the story of an army family trying to adjust to the cloistered, small town life of a base in rural Idaho. Paul is working at one of the US’s early nuclear s; his wife Nat, a bit of a free spirit by the mores of the time and place, is trying to fit in without completely giving in. (She reminds me of Bill Masters’ wife Libby in Masters of Sex.) Early on, Paul suspects that his boss is taking dangerous shortcuts at the , and knows for sure that said boss is a creep, as evidenced by a scene so sexist, violent and abusive I’d rather not describe it. When Paul confronts him, he gets sent away to Greenland to work on another project, leaving Nat and the girls to fend for themselves. What happens at the is spelled out from the beginning and what goes on in Nat’s life is fairly predictable-- spoiler alert: there’s a well-meaning, laconic cowboy involved--but Williams never lets the melodrama (or the relationship) go too far; keeping her focus tight on Nat and Paul and the longstanding tensions that were merely exacerbated by the move to Idaho, she keeps the story swift, believable and surprising. Williams gets the details and language of the time just right--a doctor’s receptionist actually informs Nat of her pregnancy by saying “the rabbit died” and there’s wit in even her most ordinary observations: “It was remarkable how even the mere mention of a couple of s could make Richards act as if he’d already had them.” This is a wise, entertaining and illuminating novel. --Sara Nelson