A girl's guide to missiles : growing up in America's secret desert

Resource Information

The work A girl's guide to missiles : growing up in America's secret desert represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Marion & Ed Hughes Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

A girl's guide to missiles : growing up in America's secret desert

Title remainder

growing up in America's secret desert

Statement of responsibility

Karen Piper

Title variation

Growing up in America's secret desert

Creator

• Piper, Karen

Author

• Piper, Karen

Subject

• Piper, Earl Marwin, 1922-2005
• Guided missiles -- United States -- History -- Anecdotes
• Young women -- West (U.S.) -- Biography
• California, Southern -- Social life and customs -- 20th century
• Piper, Karen
• Piper, Mary Dahlstrom
• United States, Office of Strategic Services -- Biography
• Electronic technicians -- United States -- Biography
• Cold War
• Naval Ordnance Test Station (China Lake, Calif.) -- Employees -- Biography

Genre

• Biography
• Anecdotes

Language

eng

Summary

"A poignant, surreal, and fearlessly honest look at growing up on one of the most secretive weapons installations on earth, by a young woman who came of age with missiles. The China Lake missile range is located in a huge stretch of the Mojave Desert, about the size of the state of Delaware. It was created during the Second World War, and has always been shrouded in secrecy. But people who make missiles and other weapons are regular working people, with domestic routines and everyday dilemmas, and four of them were Karen Piper's parents, her sister, and--when she needed summer jobs--herself. Her dad designed the Sidewinder, which was ultimately used catastrophically in Vietnam. When her mom got tired of being a stay-at-home mom, she went to work on the Tomahawk. Once, when a missile nose needed to be taken offsite for final testing, her mother loaded it into the trunk of the family car, and set off down a Los Angeles freeway. Traffic was heavy, and so she stopped off at the mall, leaving the missile in the parking lot. Piper sketches in the belief systems--from Amway's get-rich schemes to propaganda in The Rocketeer to evangelism, along with fears of a Lemurian takeover and Charles Manson--that governed their lives. Her memoir is also a search for the truth of the past and what really brought her parents to China Lake with two young daughters, a story that reaches back to her father's World War II flights with contraband across Europe. Finally, it recounts the crossroads moment in a young woman's life when she finally found a way out of a culture of secrets and fear, and out of the desert."--Provided by publisher

Biography type

autobiography

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

• 358.1/7092
• B

Index

no index present

LC call number

VF373

LC item number

.P57 2018

Literary form

non fiction