Two Los Alamos boys forge a friendship in the shadow of their parents' history-changing work developing nuclear weapons
In many ways, Los Alamos is an ideal place for best friends Brice McCarthy and Kip Calder to grow up. There's wilderness to explore; brilliant and fascinating people, including their own parents and neighbors; and a booming wartime economy. Still, the town was built for one purpose: to manufacture a weapon capable of total annihilation. As the two boys grow and the United States enters the Vietnam War, the psychic fallout of their parents' deeds pushes Brice and Kip toward opposite sides in the conflict—one, a soldier; the other, an antiwar activist—even as they come to love the same woman. Trinity Fields is a sweeping saga of American life in the atomic age that brilliantly illuminates the soul of a nation.