A Thin Bright Line

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

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.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, LGBT, Historical, Queer, Lesbian, Romance

336 pages, Hardcover

First published October 18, 2016

About the author

Preorder Lucy's new novel, TELL THE REST, about love, rage, and redemption, at https://amzn.to/3QRyHXD. The New York Times says Lucy Jane Bledsoe's novel, A THIN BRIGHT LINE, "triumphs." Ms. Magazine calls her novel, THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE, "fabulous feminist fiction." Her 2018 collection of stories, LAVA FALLS, won the Devil's Kitchen Fiction Award. Bledsoe played basketball in both high school and college. As a social justice activist, she's passionate about working for voting rights.

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical fiction like this always makes me so thankful for the people who came before me. Unwilling to remain silent and unseen. How brave they were.
Even though I loved the story, the best part to me was the post script. It was such a personal story for the author which made the whole thing a little more interesting.

[Alena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not sure yet what to do with all my feels. Best thing I've read in along time.

------

Ok, a couple of hours later and I think I may be able to write about this coherently.

I've always liked Bledsoe's writing, but she outdid herself here. You feel that this story is a labor of love and that she pours everything she's got into it. The introduction and the postscript (which I cried right through) go into this and I feel she did her aunt proud.

I've read about the McCarthy era before, and I've read about queer life during the time before but never has it come alive for me as it did here and with Lucybelle.* The repression, the different levels of closets, the blackmail. The self-hatred. The racism of the era.

And then the slow changing of times, the Civil Rights Movement. A little bit of freedom, but not really. Queerness still has to stay hidden.

The canvass Bledsoe paints shows the coping strategies of different characters that share Lucybelle's life.

Eye-opening and moving, great writing makes this very memorable.

*Not quite true. Sarah Dreher does an equally good job of this in Solitaire and Brahms.

[Liz Dannenbaum · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Thin Bright Line is a thoroughly engrossing novel. It fully succeeds on several levels. First, it captures two particular eras in American history--the paranoia of Joe McCarthy's 1950s as well as the anxious hopefulness of Dr. King's 1960s. The story contrasts the lives of lesbians trying to survive amidst the institutionalized homophobia and racism of that period. Second, the story features two wonderfully realized love stories. And third, and for this reader most compelling aspect of the novel, is how Bledsoe creates a group of absolutely believable and recognizable friends who alternately support and fail one another--the way groups of friends so often do.

The women in a Thin Bright Line live claustrophobic lives: homes with no living room windows, parties where the guests feel compelled to stay inside, pressures to enter heterosexual marriages, and families who refuse to acknowledge who they really are. Bledsoe's marvelous heroine (based closely on Bledsoe's aunt) recoils from these constraints and searches for a happier, less dishonest, more authentic way to live and she largely succeeds.

This is one of the best novels I have ever had the pleasure to read.

[Sissy Van Dyke · Rating 5 out of 5]

LGBTQ youth in the U.S. are no strangers to alienation, discrimination, and all manner of oppression, that confronts members of our community on an ongoing basis. However, I am very pleased to say that most of our youth will be unfamiliar with the fear that comes from the knowledge that coming out could lead to loss of one's job, career, future and possibly even imprisonment. This is an existential, ontological fear that follows one daily and hovers like a cloak over our lives, our friends, and, most of all, over and between us and our lovers.

This fear of Being is so aptly described by Lucy Jane Bledsoe in this book, that I felt it like a chill in the back of my neck throughout. Having spent many years in the military, I lived with this fear daily and I recognized it like Dorian Gray's painting of an evil and ugly time of my life.

In spite of everything, the main character finds joy, and friendship, and love, just as I did, and as we all do. I am only sad that the character and the author's aunt, on whom the character was based, did not live long enough to see a time when we could finally take off the cloak of fear (while always keeping a wary sweater handy), and live out and proud in the world, being fully ourselves.

[Eaton Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deft and entertaining. A pleasure to read about a women in the sciences. I love that Lucy Jane Bledsoe is writing lesbians back into history, and her imagined family story both breaks my heart and mends it.

[Lori Ostlund · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, which is beautifully written and weaves together major historical events--the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, McCarthyism--with the life of LucyBelle Bledsoe, a science writer and lesbian. LucyBelle, the main character, is a fictionalized version of the author's aunt, about whom she has done extensive research, yet never does the book feel overwhelmed by research (as is sometimes the case with historical fiction). Instead, LucyBelle exists on the page as a fully realized character, flawed and very much loved by the author. I would recommend this book to a variety of readers, from those who love historical fiction or those interested in GLBTQ history to those who simply crave a terrific character and love good storytelling.

[Peter Gajdics · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucy Jane Bledsoe's "A Thin Bright Line" has left me overwhelmed by its brilliance. From page one, I was hooked by its historical setting: the Cold War, McCarthyism, the rising civil rights movement, J.F.K and Martin Luther King, Jr., even a time in history when threatening to expose a person's "secret life" of homosexuality was still considered a weapon of disenfranchisement. All generations stand on the shoulders of their predecessors, and I am grateful to have read this book and gained greater insight into what it must have been like to be "like me" only a few short generations ago. The level of detail and research that Ms. Bledsoe so obviously invested into writing this book of historical fiction left me breathless. I was heartbroken when the novel ended because I wanted to go on living with each and every one of the novel's "characters," written into startling life by Lucy Jane Bledsoe. That the main "character" was Ms. Bledsoe's real life aunt made the reading all that more palpable, immediate. I could not recommend this book more, and my only regret is there aren't enough stars by which to "judge" this brilliant novel. Read it; you will not soon forget it.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

From the cover jacket, this book has so much potential - a queer, Cold War, science story? Count me in! But unfortunately it falls short of the hype. The characters were flat and did not develop, to the point that I was caught off-guard when various characters expressed their love for each other, since it caught me by surprise. I wonder whether the author was too constrained by the few facts she had and unwilling to project more into the story, even if that would have brought the characters to life? There was also potential for the book to share more scientific details, the way some memoirs do, which might have compensated for the flat characters, but in this regard too it falls short. There are also many parts of the book that don’t seem entirely believable, including how race is addressed and the veiled threats/fears that prevent Lucy from freely leaving her job. Finally, there is nothing particularly interesting about the writing; there are some cliches, though not enough to be a nuisance, but overall it failed to engage me.

[Ulla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, although I would have appreciated a bit more "humanity" . . . feelings and so!

[Leah Manino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished this book and absolutely loved it.

[Bett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucy Jane Bledsoe is one of my favorite writers. This novel, an unusual blend history and personal intersections, a joyful imagining of what might have been, what should have been, balanced with what actually happened. In short, just the sort book I love. Bledsoe is named for an aunt who died when Bledsoe was young. Left with only a few memories and even fewer facts, the natural curiosity about her namesake sent Bledsoe on a quest to find out all she could. This novel rests on the bare facts, but is built with obvious love and even pride in a relative whose life eerily foreshadows the author's. How much of this story is fact, how much is fiction? I think you will find, as I did, that you hope most of it is true. The story spans ten years of Lucybelle Bledsoe's too-short life. That decade of years from 1956-1966 were important ones in the nation's history, in cultural shifts, in the immense civil rights struggles that largely ignored the homosexual community. In a time when women married and raised children, Lucybelle remain unmarried. In a time when the professions, especially the scientific ones, excluded women, Lucybelle worked and excelled in the scientific field on the study of the earth, climate change, and the polar regions. Working as an editor of science papers for researchers, she gradually earned the respect of the men she worked for, including her boss, Henri Bader, obssessed with studying the polar icecaps. Promising to lie about being a lesbian, creating a fictional dead husband, Lucy took the job, received classified information, and had no intention of keeping her word not "act" on her proclivity for females. She became an indispensable part of the project.
The characters are vivid and real. And some of them are heartbreaking. There is Stella, the confidant, cross-dressing owner of a cab company whose passion is photography. And Dorothy whose idea of friendship and trust warps as her disappointments pile up. Finally there is Dr. Vera Prescott, who holds PhD's in two fields and excels at her work. This is a beautifully written and carefully researched book. It lingers in my mind. I am as proud of those women as I would be if I knew them. Bledsoe has given me that.

[Sarah Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, with its clear-eyed focus on an era of lesbian life that we know too little about, is important, lovely, heart-breaking, honest, and meticulously researched. The opening knowledge that the protagonist, Lucybelle Bledsoe (the author's aunt), died in a fire at the age of 43 created an aching tension in the narrative, as Lucybelle gained a bolder confidence in living her life in love, and Bledsoe's decision to organize the narrative by specific dates intensifies that tension. I loved Lucybelle: I loved her brilliance, her deep appreciation for science, her way of falling deeply in love (and fast). She was a real person, and her niece has presented this eloquent fictional possibility of her life in a way that resonates with a deep truth. As Bledsoe explains in the notes at the end of the book, she had scant primary source documents from Lucybelle's life on which to base the story, but the silences served as their own sources, and Bledsoe has artfully filled in details from an impressive variety of sources on lesbian life during the time period.

It's true that I frequently longed for Lucybelle to defy the U.S. government's demand for her celibacy and secrecy; it's true that I wanted her to live openly and proudly. But I am a lesbian who lives in 2018, when the entire world has changed. Lucybelle lived as openly as she dared. Like Bledsoe, I hope she loved as fiercely and as joyfully as Bledsoe has imagined here.

This book presents a sort of intellectual mirror held up to the classic lesbian pulp fiction of the 1950s and 60s: a true glimpse of the women who tried to read between the lines of those books that ended with women marrying men or dying or going insane. There WERE women like Lucybelle. Are all of Bledsoe's guesses about her life correct? Does that matter? They are certainly TRUE. That's what makes this book so important to read.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story behind this book is incredible, and is a testament to the thin bright line that divides the generations, even when they are separated by loss, secrets, and time. I truly loved several of Lucy Jane Bledsoe's books, most notably This Wild Silence and The Big Bang Symphony. However, I felt that this book fell short of some of the others: the plot was tedious and sometimes confusing, focused too much on intimate details of the imagined relationships and love affairs of the protagonist. This was a book that seemed written more for the author than for the reader. I actually think this book would have been much more effective had it instead been written from the point of view of the author, and had it been a non-fiction narrative which described the author's quest to learn the story of her aunt's life in its historical context.

[Alex Bledsoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel based on the life of the author's namesake aunt, this took me into aspects of society I knew little about: Cold War non-atomic science, the queer subculture of the 50s, Chicago in the early 60s. The characters were all vivid and memorable, down to the party guests and the scientists. It's bittersweet as well, which isn't a spoiler if you read the author's note at the beginning. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading the multitude of glowing 5-star reviews, I had to give this book a read. I came away asking, "did we read the same book?" It reads like a relationship procedural. There is little to no plot or character development. Storylines are clumsy and characters act in ways that are contrary to their unforeshadowed nature. To say it reads like non-fiction is to insult authors like Erik Larson whose masterful narrative style demonstrate that Bledsoe is out of her depth.

[Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every now and then, there comes a book with a story that you know and realize will stay with you for a very long time and this is one of those stories. You know that when opportunity presents itself, you will share snippets. From the beginning, the story pulled me in. The main character, Lucybelle Bledsoe, is a talented scientific writer, with a caring heart, and looking to share her life. This story is written by her niece (Lucy Jane Bledsoe) and namesake.

This historical story focuses on women, relationships, love, and career, woven around various movements and well known people. This read reminds me that although there has been progress more work needs to be made around LGBTQ+ issues. What I appreciate most was the "creative" ways in which Lucybelle and the women surrounding Lucybelle navigated their queerness. These women dealt with paranoia, homophobia, and job security yet they lived as full of a life as they could. I also embraced the passion and outpouring of love the author showed for the ways the women created a "good life".

Wonderful writing, interesting characters, historical perspective, and extremely memorable.

[☽ Chaya ☾ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
this is a quite messy book. In the sense that it goes all over the place, lots of things happen and I feel like there're lots of loose threads. It's entertaining enough. I didn't struggle to finish this at all but it's sometimes a bit hard to follow along.

But overall I did have quite a few issues with this book. There're different events taking place that I feel we've had no lead up to. Also some characters relationships feel like they came out of the blue. I also don't like how race was made a thing but then not at all properly addressed. There was too much information and not enough character development or deep dive into emotions/events.

I like the fact that this is based on someone's life. And real lives are messy and all over the place. And it's also kind of a tribute of the author to her aunt.

This is definitely not a must read and doesn't really deliver on what is "promised".

[Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd had this book on my list for a while, must have seen it mentioned somewhere -- it was excellent! The 1950s time frame was fraught with secrecy and complicated hidden lifestyles for the lesbians in the story, and some handled it well, others not as much. The lesbian author based the book on her real life aunt Lucybelle who, when she researched her, was actually also a lesbian, and a cool editor and smartypants. There's a brief affair with a female Black cab company owner, a visit to a Black lesbian bar in NYC, and finally a beautiful loving relationship. Lucybelle works for the government and is outstanding in her job as the author learned from an award and science magazine recognition still on record despite the aunt dying in the early 1960s. Highly recommend.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Story about a Cold War era lesbian who moved to Chicago to work for the government as a science editor and hid her sexuality in order to keep that job; based on the research the author did of her aunt.

I'm still forming thoughts. I enjoyed this (lesbians! Chicago!) but also found this era incredibly depressing. She does get a happy ending (...of sorts) with a partner but she goes through hell to get there and reading that hell depressed me. There's also a lot of petty lesbian drama and a lot of emotionally unavailable and emotionally avoidant people that I got tired of their bullshit. Still, reading the foreword and afterword of the author's ties to her aunt, the desperate amount of research she did to get to know her, is pretty amazing.

[Laura Joakimson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met the author at reading and bought her book immediately because the story was compelling and the author’s love for her aunt palpable. Then the introduction was so heartbreaking I put it aside for a while. Thinking that the story was too sad for right now.

Three years later, I started reading and finished it in three days. This is a novel about a hidden figure. A hero of climate science and civil rights who lived life partially on her own terms. I love the characters and the postscript about how much detective work went into recreating a life...loved it. An unforgettable story I can’t wait to pass on to others.

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

i could’ve done without the post story part of this book tbh and there were too many conquests to make it a compelling love story

all in all a good book I was never bored reading! 3.5 ⭐️

[Cutty · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't finish this book - I got about 1/3 of the way into it and decided it just wasn't for me. When I read the reviews, I thought that it was going to be more about science and the polar ice core and a little bit about Lucybelle's personal life. Instead it was the other way around - not much about the science. Maybe it would get more into it later in the book, but I didn't have the patience to continue and find out.

[Kayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a love letter to lesbians lost. It’s beautiful, harrowing, and true. It honors the women who came before us. A must read for modern lesbians.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Thin Bright Line is a lovely homage to the queer women who bravely navigated their careers, families, social circles by hiding (or not) their desires, their lovers, and often having to sacrifice something in the bargain. It's an homage to a little-known aunt, the author's namesake, who seemed to lived two lives: the one her family saw and/or wanted to believe and the one she actually lived, fictionalized here.

The novel itself is just okay. It meanders between engrossing and boring pretty consistently. The characters aren't fully developed and are grossly stereotypical, and there are some inconsistencies and errors in the writing that irked me ("funnest"? Really?), but at the end I was invested.

The tragedy of the story happens off of the page, explained in the prologue, so this defies the typical Bury Your Gays Trope by a technicality. The true tragedy--aside from Lucybelle's life being cut so short and leaving behind a partner and *sobs* a dog--is Lucy not being able to really get to know her aunt--the person whose path she unwittingly followed (in name, in sexuality, in science, in writing a novel).

This isn't the best thing I've read, but it packs an emotional punch if you can make it until the end.

[Kathleen Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books of the year. It's thoughtfully and beautifully written with a huge heart and a terrific story. Lucybelle is an incredibly brave woman who I would love to have met. Her story spans so many issues but she's so human and relatable; her untimely death is a tragedy because she undoubtedly had so much more to give and love to share. Thanks to Beldsoe for bringing her aunt to life - she's done a terrific job.

[Mary]

The author has clearly spent so much time and care on this one! The tale is personal and sweet and I so appreciate her intentions. But it did feel a little drawn out and flat to me. Ugh I’m a jerk though it was lovely

[Helena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah gosh what to say. This book hit me pretty hard. I could see myself in a lot of it (and not always in a good way.) Lucybelle is compelled to live the life she wants, and for the most part, doesn't shy away from it for a second. That's freaking incredible, wish I had an iota of what made up that woman..

Dorothy is me, to a t. I'd bet money the voices in her head are the sames ones that ring in my, from growing up in the south too. That urge to conform and be "normal" even if it means tossing out your entire personality.

Like others, I cried through a big chunk of the afterword. I had seen the part titles and knew the last one was in california, so I held out hope until the very end that Lucy had given her a happier ending than she told would come in the preface. But as scientists we're beholden to the truth.

This book is our history, this book is my history. After finishing it, all I can feel is ashamed: that I haven't been braver or more proud of how I got here, the struggles they went through, and the fights they braved just to survive. We shouldn't forget it, and it's a crime how many of those stories were lost to secrecy and time.

That’s where Estelle Freedman’s essay saved my project. She points out that many lesbians in the past did not keep their letters. They burned them. They spent their lives hiding the evidence. This means that when researching lesbians in history, so much has to be gleaned from conjecture and inference, and that this is valid. The hard evidence, in many cases, simply does not exist. In fact, its very absence is a clue.

gives me hope for the future at least, I look forward to more novels like this uncovering such wonderful stories from our past.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling - I was itching the whole time to get to the postscript and learn how much was real and how the author learned what she learned - and infused with both anxiety and hope throughout. The oppression of the McCarthy era slowly giving way to a more open and liberated time. Fantastic historical fiction in that it shows us how an ordinary person's life could be made so extraordinary by the scientific progress and social changes it intersected with, and in that it fills in the queerness that is too often erased from the official archive. The fact that the author had to dig so deeply to discover what she shared with her aunt is a testament to how damaging that erasure is.

Highly recommended if you don't mind stories without much of a plot - like a real life, this narrative meanders through relationships and everyday drama without fitting neatly into an arc. (I loved the occasional references to the pulpy lesbian tragedy novels of the time, paralleling the tragic ending of Lucybelle's story and reminding us that the joy before the inevitable end is the part we're reading for.)

My one disappointment is that a major character - one of the more complex and fascinating ones - doesn't get her due in the postscript. How real was she, in Lucybelle's life or as another someone who may have existed? What did the author know about her community and how it intersected with Lucybelle's?

[Nora Peevy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucy Bledsoe blends fact with fiction to uncover the lost story of her favorite aunt, Lucybelle Bledsoe, a brilliant, pioneering climate change science writer responsible for hundreds of science papers spanning the 1960s that are the basis for today's climate change knowledge, which started with The Army Corp of Engineers researching ice cores in Antarctica to reveal thousands of years of the earth's climate history. Bledsoe gives "a thin bright line" into the life of her beloved aunt who lived in secrecy as a lesbian during the Cold War and Civil Rights era, a very dangerous time for the LBGTQ community. Lucy's writing is filled with love, grace, humor, and truth. It's a beautiful novel and a fitting tribute to one of our pioneering feminists in the scientific community. Her story read like a dream, a wonderful dream of a life well lived. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in pioneering women, the science of climate change, lesbian fiction, or love stories. This book is all of those things combined.

[Shankar Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to describe a story you know going to be a tragic one? Yes, indeed, it is a tragic fictional biography about the author's aunt. Lucybelle and her struggles with her relationships with other women, her struggles to not to be lonesome and perhaps even more. Difference creates line which is so thin that you don't even realise it exists, although this thin line has brightness which dazzle you again and again. Perhaps I'm dazzled not by the story as much as, I'm dazzled with the context, the helplessness to dug up the past, the facts , the secrets which we want to know but we couldn't. Time swallows the chunk of our past as it is the nutrition for itself and leaves us hungry.