A Thin Bright Line
Published on 30. October 2016
Book
Hardback
280 pages
978-0-299-30930-5 (ISBN)
Description
Brilliant geology editor Lucybelle Bledsoe is offered a job too good to pass up. Her new boss is a visionary climate scientist whose mission is to extract the first-ever complete ice cores from the Greenland icecap. Knowing the risks, she warily accepts the classified government position. If she were to fall in love again with a woman, she could lose everything.
Based on the true story of the author's aunt and namesake, and on the search to uncover her remarkable past, A Thin Bright Line encompasses Cold War intrigues, the origins of climate research, the joyful pangs of love, and the impossible compromises of queer life in the 1950s and '60s.
Based on the true story of the author's aunt and namesake, and on the search to uncover her remarkable past, A Thin Bright Line encompasses Cold War intrigues, the origins of climate research, the joyful pangs of love, and the impossible compromises of queer life in the 1950s and '60s.
Reviews / Votes
"Through her fictional reconstruction of the life of her namesake, her beloved aunt-who fought the good fight as a pioneering professional and a lesbian in unsympathetic times-Lucy Jane Bledsoe recreates an important piece of history and imagines what it was like to live it. A Thin Bright Line is poignant in both its conception and execution."-Lillian Faderman, author of The Gay Revolution"This is gripping historical fiction about queer life at the height of the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement, and its grounding in fact really makes it sing. Like the scientists whose papers she edits, Lucybelle Bledsoe is passionate about the truth. Whether it's the climate history of the planet as illuminated by cores of polar ice, or the pursuit of an authentic emotional life in the miasma of McCarthyism, she operates with piercing honesty."-Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
"An engaging and moving novel about an unforgettable character. Bledsoe's writing is intelligent, unadorned, and unsentimental, which allows us to look at a difficult time in American history with clarity instead of nostalgia."-Rabih Alameddine, author of An Unnecessary Woman.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Wisconsin
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
598 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-299-30930-5 (9780299309305)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Lucy Jane Bledsoe is an award-winning science writer and novelist for adults and children. Her many books include The Ice Cave: A Woman's Adventures from the Mojave to the Antarctic, The Big Bang Symphony: A Novel of Antarctica, This Wild Silence, and Working Parts. A native of Portland, Oregon, she lives in Berkeley, California.