A Thin Bright Line by Lucy Jane BledsoeDo the wlw end up together : Yes7/10This book gets bonus poin

A Thin Bright Line by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

Do the wlw end up together : Yes

7/10

This book gets bonus points for being written by a lesbian woman about her real-life lesbian aunt. As Bledsoe explains in the forward, her aunt (also named Lucy) died while she was barely old enough to remember her. Researching her aunt years later, Bledsoe discovers that her aunt was revered for her work editing scientific reports on the project to drill the first complete ice core. For anyone wondering, this is still a technique we use to today to investigate what our planet’s climate was like millennia ago. This book is Bledsoe’s attempt to piece together what little information she does have about her aunt, with plenty of fabrication to make it just as compelling a read as any other historical novel. 

Lucy has just been left by her long term girlfriend when she’s approached by an odd-mannered man with a strange proposition: move to Chicago and work for the government. She takes him up on it and joins an odd crew of grammatically-challenged scientists and a very few female employees. She’s pretty quick to find close lesbian friends even while working in the government during the peak years of the Lavender Scare. When unmarked packages containing lesbian pulp fiction titles start appearing on her desk, she begins to think she might be the next one out the door. Because there are so many lesbian characters in this book it’s a really interesting look at the many ways individuals responded to the persecutions of the 1950s and ‘60s. Some crumple, others are so paranoid to hide to the detriment of their relationships, and some know exactly who they are and what they want. In general the people that Lucy meets are understanding, slowly learning to accept a woman editing their papers and pointing out mathematical errors and, for some of them, learning of and accepting the fact that she only loves women. My favorite part was after reading this novel, where Bledsoe goes through in much more detail about her process in finding out information about her aunt and where exactly the gaps that she filled were. I’d hope that the original Lucy Bledsoe would be happy that lesbians today are able to read her story and find some joy in her unwillingness to cave to a loveless marriage or a lie.