A girl's guide to missiles
Subtitle: growing up in America's secret desert
By: Karen Piper
Publisher: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 322
ISBN-13: 9780399564543
Subjects: Naval Ordnance Test Station (China Lake, Calif.); Social life and customs; Cold War; Anecdotes; Guided missiles; Employees; United States. Office of Strategic Services; United States; Electronic technicians; Young women; Biography; History
Other titles: Growing up in America's secret desert
Description: "A poignant, surreal, and fearlessly honest look at growing up on one of the most secretive weapons installations on earth, by a young woman who came of age with missiles. The China Lake missile range is located in a huge stretch of the Mojave Desert, about the size of the state of Delaware. It was created during the Second World War, and has always been shrouded in secrecy. But people who make missiles and other weapons are regular working people, with domestic routines and everyday dilemmas, and four of them were Karen Piper's parents, her sister, and--when she needed summer jobs--herself. Her dad designed the Sidewinder, which was ultimately used catastrophically in Vietnam. When her mom got tired of being a stay-at-home mom, she went to work on the Tomahawk. Once, when a missile nose needed to be taken offsite for final testing, her mother loaded it into the trunk of the family car, and set off down a Los Angeles freeway. Traffic was heavy, and so she stopped off at the mall, leaving the missile in the parking lot. Piper sketches in the belief systems--from Amway's get-rich schemes to propaganda in The Rocketeer to evangelism, along with fears of a Lemurian takeover and Charles Manson--that governed their lives. Her memoir is also a search for the truth of the past and what really brought her parents to China Lake with two young daughters, a story that reaches back to her father's World War II flights with contraband across Europe. Finally, it recounts the crossroads moment in a young woman's life when she finally found a way out of a culture of secrets and fear, and out of the desert"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-322).
Table of contents: title: Becoming China Lakers; title: A teenage weaponeer; title: Dynamic instability; title: The Cold War at home; title: Anything can be a weapon; title: Off target; title: Life without weapons.