Review by New York Times Review
THE most iconic telling of our great national myth of space conquest, Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff," opens with a scene of a wife frantically imagining that her husband has died. The woman, Jane Conrad, has been informed by a growing chorus of fellow officer wives that something has happened at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station, where her husband, Pete, is a test pilot. Jane knows what something means. She can all but see Pete's mangled, charred remains lying amid the palmetto grass, the smoking wreckage of his aircraft strewn about. As the minutes tick by, she grows increasingly panicked and calls the office of Pete's squadron. They refuse to answer her questions. She hangs up and waits for her doorbell to ring, now certain of her fate. Her husband is dead. (We learn on the next page that he is, in fact, alive. A decade and a half later, Pete Conrad walks on the moon.) Imagine a book-length exploration of Jane Conrad's feelings of anxiety and helplessness, devotion and dread, and you'll get a sense of Lily Koppel's latest work of nonfiction, "The Astronaut Wives Club," essentially a retelling of "The Right Stuff" and Norman Mailer's "Of a Fire on the Moon" from the perspective of the women behind the spacemen. The story of NASA's early years typically follows an arc from fear to triumph. In October 1957, Americans stare up at the dark specter of Sputnik 1 and dream of Soviet missiles raining down from orbit. Less than 12 years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon, the bear vanquished. Koppel tracks this same history, but in her version the trajectory is reversed. The women begin their journey as enthusiastic, patriotic housewives. They end it disillusioned, angry and wise. The first half of this book is little more than historical fluff. Writing in a one-of-the-gals third person, Koppel - a former reporter for The New York Times and the author of "The Red Leather Diary" -tells us that her subjects are "very different, complicated women," but portrays them as indistinguishable domestic goddesses. The wives face down the frenzied press with "slightly knitted eyebrows, perfectly applied lipstick and well-practiced aplomb." Shopping and socializing seem to be their primary vocations, and Koppel lavishes great detail on the wives' sartorial choices. (Betty Grissom selected both "a marigold scoop neck" dress for a group photo on the cover of Life magazine and "a sunny yellow shirt-waist dress, cinched at her slim waist with a belt," for an inside shot.) Lest we get the mistaken idea that these women lived for clothes, Koppel emphasizes how they slavishly adored their hunky hubbies. After one of them receives an unwanted lesbian advance in Mexico City, she and two other wives retreat to their hotel, where they "woke up to find their guys strutting into the room, reeking of maleness. That was more like it," Koppel adds. But tragedy comes to Togethersville, as the Houston astronaut suburbs were called, and with it both Koppel's narrative and her subjects grow sharper and deeper. As their husbands die in training-jet crashes and the Apollo 1 fire, the wives begin to examine their lives. They wonder why they need to put up with philandering, and they question whether their domestic sacrifices are worth it. After Ed White dies in the capsule blaze, his wife, Pat, falls into an unshakable depression. "She just worked at being Ed's wife," another astronaut wife tells Koppel, "and she was wonderful at it, and that was all." By the time the Apollo 17 capsule splashes down in December 1972, the astronaut wives are a transformed brood. Some have embarked on their own careers and divorced their hero-husbands. Others have failed to move on. In the heartbreaking epilogue, Koppel tells us that the original astronaut wives tried to meet again in the mid-1980s. The weekend before their reunion, Pat White committed suicide. Even Marge Slayton, the chief organizer of the wives, eventually had enough. Shortly after her husband, Deke, finally got his trip to space in 1975, she divorced him. "Like many of the wives," Koppel writes, "Marge just couldn't take it anymore - the lying, the cheating and the feeling that her husband had abandoned their home for that 'harlot of a town,' the Cape." Seven of the first 30 astronaut wives lost their husbands during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo years. This sad, poignant book makes it clear that those women weren't the only widows. Eric Benson, a former editor at New York magazine, has written about the American space program for Men's Journal and the online magazine Guernica.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 21, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
Koppel offers a revealing glimpse into the lives of the women behind the spacemen from Project Mercury, of the Kennedy years, to the two-man Gemini missions and finally the Apollo program. Beginning with the announcement in 1959 of the seven Mercury astronauts, Koppel paints chatty, personal portraits of each woman as she adjusts to dramatic changes: one day she's living the life of an ordinary military wife; the next she's married to a major celebrity. The wives were closely monitored by NASA and expected to be perfect, right down to what they wore and what food they served their husbands. They needed a support group, so the Astronaut Wives Club came into being in 1966. Over the years, they worked together in myriad ways, from helping the wives whose husbands died in crashes or Apollo I's disastrous launch-pad fire to sleeping in the Lovell's living room while Jim Lovell was orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve 1968. The U.S. moon program ended in 1972 but many of these unique women still remain connected, friends now for more than 50 years.--Donovan, Deborah Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this entertaining and quirky throwback, journalist Koppel (The Red Leather Diary) revisits the ladies who cheered and bolstered their men to victory in the U.S. space program from the late '50s through early 1970s, revealing public triumph and rarely private agony. Koppel looks at the history of the race to space, starting with the Mercury Seven of April 1959, and focusing on the wives: e.g., Louise Shepard (wife of Alan), Betty Grissom (Gus) and Annie Glenn (John), young women who wore teased hair, bright lipstick, and cat-eye sunglasses, and towed numerous small children. The wives had to be gracious to the Life magazine reporters who invaded their homes, concealing unpleasant domestic details, such as marital discord, philandering husbands, and unseemly competition with other wives. The wives were invited to live at or near the Langley, Va., Air Force base, where the astronauts trained before relocating to Houston (aka Space City, USA) in 1962; the women socialized with each other, toured the White House with Jackie Kennedy, and watched their husbands' launches on TV together over champagne and cigarettes. Some missions ended in tragedy, such as when a failed test flight in 1967 resulted in the deaths of Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. The Gemini and the Apollo missions followed, compelling the wives of legendary astronauts Collins, Aldrin, and Armstrong, among others, to endure seeing their husbands go on dangerous moon missions. This is truly a great snapshot of the times. Agent: Larry Weissman. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In her newest work, Koppel (The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal) takes up the story of the wives of astronauts from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects (with references to wives of astronauts from Space Shuttle missions as well). Her engaging narrative provides an in-depth look at military wives who became instant celebrities when their husbands were chosen for the space program. Along with the fame came intense media scrutiny; the wives felt pressured to compete for Stepford-wife-like perfection. The inability to publicly admit to concerns or problems made them turn to each other for support. Through death, infidelity, and scandalous divorce, these women have formed a network of strength and friendship. Koppel interviewed many of these women and attended one of their regular reunions. -VERDICT The author's aim was to uncover the real lives behind the "perfect" astronaut wives, and she hits the mark, crafting an exceptional story that seriously examines the imperfection and humanity of America's heroic astronauts, their wives, and their families. This work will hold vast appeal for armchair historians, and those interested in feminism, women's history, and 20th-century history.-Crystal Goldman, San Jose State Univ. Lib., CA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Koppel (The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life through the Pages of a Lost Journal, 2008, etc.) explores the cohesiveness of a group of wives who formed an unofficial support group and their individual development during the early years of the Cold War. With the announcement on April 9, 1959, of the "nation's first astronauts," the women's lives changed, as they became instant celebrities along with their husbands. From Project Mercury to the Apollo program and the moon landings, the author traces how the lives of the wives of the original astronauts were transformed by these developments. Ubiquitous reporters, anxious to cover their most intimate moments, and their new status as American icons, intruded into every aspect of their daily lives. Being impeccably groomed became yet another challenge to their existence as de facto single mothers; their husbands were away training for their missions into space. Although they were familiar with the typical stresses facing the wives of career military officers--their husbands' long absences (sometimes on dangerous missions), poor pay, dismal living quarters, frequent moves and more--this public exposure was a first. They had their own part to play in a less obvious aspect of winning the Cold War: the public-relations offensive. The wives were guests at the White House and joined their husbands on international goodwill tours, showcasing the much-envied American lifestyle. Not only were astronauts judged by their own performance, but their wives and children were also rated. Koppel describes their appearance on the pages of Life magazine, looking like "scoops of ice cream" in their "pressed pastel shirtwaists." The glamor of Jackie Kennedy was a welcome change, and they enjoyed the perks that came with celebrity, including a lucrative contract with Life. Insightful social history with a light touch.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
