Where the Ground Meets the Sky
Grades 5-8--This well-constructed novel has the elements of a good adventure story but also depicts one family's struggle to stay together in the face of adversity. The year is 1944 and war is raging in Europe and the Pacific while 12-year-old Hazel is fighting her own battles somewhere in the New Mexico desert. Life has gotten complicated and lonely since her dad brought her and her mother to live on the Hill, a military base surrounded by a chain-link fence and barbed wire. A brilliant physicist, he and other scientists are working on the Big Mystery, while Hazel's mother, who believes that secrets are "bad for the soul," has slowly retreated into her own world. Hazel is a strong protagonist who behaves with compassion and sensitivity toward family and friends. She experiences the emotional loss of her mother and the physical loss of her father, who spends countless hours at work on "the gadget." The gold-star banners found on some of the houses on the Hill that signify the death of a serviceman, and the death of Hazel's friend's cat, which had been exposed to radiation, symbolize the tragic nature of war. The descriptive narrative wonderfully juxtaposes the dreariness of the Hill with the beauty of the natural landscape, offering hope. This suspenseful story successfully captures the tensions of a volatile period in American history as the atomic bomb was being developed. Readers will be left with plenty to think about and no simple answers.Janet Gillen, Great Neck Public Library, NYCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.