Come Down Somewhere

The U.S. Army moved in on a Sunday—commandeering the isolated Alexander farm for a secret project in the unforgiving desert of New Mexico during World War II. Teenager Olive Alexander, awkward from years of isolated living, is sent away without explanation to live in “Rocket City,” where everything is riddled with secrets and tension. Eight years later, Jo Hawthorne (Olive’s lone friend and the daughter of the Army sergeant who stole the Alexander family’s land) returns to Alamogordo and finds that the consequences of her father’s secret research stretch wider than anyone could have imagined. Though Jo travels to the ends of the earth, she realizes that there is nowhere far enough to outrun the all-encompassing love of God. In her sophomore novel, Wright (If It Rains) peels back the shiny veneer of the Atomic Age to reveal families between a rock and a hard place as they try to protect their loved ones.