Jean M. Roberts : The Book's Delight

  Rocket Girl by Diane Vallere The Short Story: A super blend of historical fiction and murder mystery It’s 1961 and Kick Johnson, a young woman, recently widowed, is left with a mortgage and a car payment, and is in desperate need of a job. Despite her lackluster skills, she applies for a secretarial position at the Center for Rocket Science Research and to her delight, gets hired as a math aide doing research for NASA and the space program. Unfortunately. on her first day of work, she all but trips over a dead body, that of an engineer, but one she recognizes under puzzling circumstances. Of course, she has to investigate! I really enjoyed this book, part murder mystery, part historical fiction, and part women’s fiction. The book is set in the 1960s Dallas and the space race has reached a fevered pitch. It has a Hidden Figure’s vibe as women do the grunt work of working out highly complex equations for the engineers. I thought the author nailed the setting right, the social...