A True Story
by Lily Koppel
Review
Announcing selection of the original astronauts, NASA enlisted not just seven men, but also their spouses and children, in a bold venture to prove American superiority in the face of the Cold War.
America's space race, launched as a competition to beat the Soviets to the moon, was both a technological and public relations project. Public interest in every aspect of the astronaut families' lives, stoked by contracts with Life magazine, meant extreme pressure on the wives to project the model of perfect family life, no matter what the state of their marriage. Whatever was going on at home -- infidelity, serious illness of a child -- the astronaut wives were expected to do their patriotic duty by publicly declaring they were "proud, thrilled and happy." Realizing only their sisters in the space program could fully understand the chaotic, demanding life they were living, the wives band together to weather the loneliness, fear, and public scrutiny foisted upon them by their husbands' careers. Much like a family, the women do not always agree with one another, but they rally for support when any one is facing extreme challenges, particularly the "death watch" of each mission and the too frequent tragedy of sudden death of a spouse. Just as the country is grappling with societal changes in the 1960s, the rewards and expectations of the astronaut wives evolve with subsequent "generations" as the astronaut corps expands in preparation for Gemini and Apollo flights. With the addition of the New Nine (1962), the Fourteen (1963) and the Nineteen (1966), much of the camaraderie of the original group is lost as all of the wives cannot even recognize, let alone know one another, yet they remain members of a small and unique sisterhood.
Pub Date: June 11, 2013
Page Count: 384pp
ISBN: 978-1-4555-0325-4
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Very professionally done. I concur with your review, as I've read this myself. Nice use of descriptive adjectives and the opening summary.
ReplyDelete