A Thin Bright Line [Hardcover]

At the height of the Cold War, Lucybelle Bledsoe is offered a job seemingly too good to pass up. However, there are risks. Her scientific knowledge and editorial skills are unparalleled, but her personal life might not withstand government scrutiny.
            Leaving behind the wreckage of a relationship, Lucybelle finds solace in working for the visionary scientist who is extracting the first-ever polar ice cores. The lucidity of ice is calming and beautiful. But the joyful pangs of a new love clash with the impossible compromises of queer life. If exposed, she could lose everything she holds dear.
            Based on the hidden life of the author’s aunt and namesake,A Thin Bright Lineis a love story set amid Cold War intrigue, the origins of climate research, and the nascent civil rights movement. Poignant, brilliant, and moving, it reminds us to act on what we love, not just wish for it.

"It triumphs as an intimate and humane evocation of day-to-day life under inhumane circumstances."—New York Times Book Review

“Bledsoe covers a lot of ground here, imagining her intellectual aunt’s relationship to the queer cultural transformations of the 1950s, as well as the paranoia of the Cold War era.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Based on a true story, this is a novel of Cold War intrigue, the origins of climate science, the joyful pangs of love, and the impossible compromises of queer life in the 1950s. Above all, it is the story of an extraordinary woman determined to rise above the restraints of her time.

“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 passionalӥ