The Trinity test site was chosen, in part, for its supposed remove from human inhabitation. Yet nearly half-a-million people were living within a 150-mile radius of the explosion, with some as close as 12 miles away. None were warned or evacuated by the US government ahead of time.
by Sarah Lindenfeld Hall
Family history was a spark for
Better Luck Next Time, the latest novel by Julia Claiborne Johnson (Col ’81). Set in 1938 Reno, Nevada, then dubbed the world’s divorce capital, the action primarily takes place on the Flying Leap dude ranch, which provided a place for women to stay as they established state residency so they could get divorced. During the Depression, Johnson’s father worked as a cowboy at a Nevada divorce ranch. The similarities between the book and real life mostly end there, Johnson says, but the setting seemed like fertile territory to explore a place where men were the eye candy and women had some control. “A flip of the usual situation,” says Johnson, whose first book,