Ruthie's whole life changes with a letter from the US government. They are taking over her family farm and 200 others to build the world's largest bomb factory.
As the factory grows and her class doubles in size, Ruthie meets Italian-American and foreign students for the first time and encounters prejudices among her old friends and new classmates that stun her and force her to consider her own Jewish identity in new ways. When tragedy strikes at the bomb factory, those prejudices explode into the open as everyone, including the FBI, seeks someone to blame.
This historical fiction novel is based on a true story from the author's family of a small Illinois prairie town upended by the government's seizure of family farms for a bomb factory during World War II.