A Thin Bright Line

By: Lucy Jane Bledsoe

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Hardcover | 18 October 2016

At a Glance

Hardcover
330 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.91

Hardcover

RRP $53.90

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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 Line is 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

Industry Reviews

"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.

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