Great story; Smith is a terrific writer.

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Smith published this book directly after his big hit, 'Gorky Park.' However, it never achieved that much success. Reading it, I can see why. It's an interesting concept, but not necessarily wholly successful.
It's an historical novel about a Native American man, Joe Pena, in the US military who is assigned to work with Oppenheimer on the Trinity Project. (the nuclear bomb). Pena's been fished out of a jail cell due to his ties with Oppenheimer, and is really expected to spy on the man, whom his superior suspects is a traitor.
Although the book comes *this* close to being a thriller, it really isn't. It's more of a rumination on racism, suspicion, poverty, ambition, violence, and, of course, love.
It's a very tense book, but the tension is more of an overarchingly oppressive aura than the tension of impending action - we, of course, know what happened at Trinity/Stallion Gate, so the outcome is not really in doubt.
This was not a bad book, but it was not my favorite by Cruz Smith.

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A compelling combination of intrigue, espionage & personal drama about America's secret effort at Los Alamos NM during WWII to create the 1st atomic bomb, that explores the passions, obsessions, doubts, deceits and motives of the diverse parties involved in seeing it both succeed or fail.

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A wonderful novel with memorable characters set during the Los Alamos trials of the atomic bomb. Profound and intelligently written.

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