Location—Part 2

I first visited Los Alamos in 2016. It was a cool, gray day—very unusual for this part of the country—and I stayed just long enough to take a brief walk around town and have a quick lunch. It wasn't until after a second, longer visit the following year that the idea for a story that would eventually become Benders began to tickle the back of my brain.

In addition to the city's role as host to Los Alamos National Laboratories, and the entirely hypothetical potential for any kind of great and terrible invention to spring from its mysterious depths, I was interested in the city's aura as a very safe, sheltering place. I get how growing up there it could feel a little too sheltering, a bit too far from the rest of the world, but I was intrigued by the idea that such a tranquil place could give rise to some kind of a major, existential threat.

In many contemporary books, the characters are motivated by desperation. Their decisions and subsequent actions are driven by the need to survive under the most dire of circumstances. I wanted to show four young people living essentially carefree lives—to the extent that high school could ever be called "carefree"—who nonetheless make similar brave decisions for no other reason than because they believe those decisions are the "right thing to do."

The photo above shows a portion of Ashley Pond Park. The labs in which the first atomic bomb was invented once stood around the perimeter of the pond. Today it is a place to picnic and to enjoy one of the city's 276 per year sunny days.