Customer Reviews

The House at Otowi Bridge: The Story of Edith Warner and Los Alamos

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3 star:		(1)
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This last weekend I delighted in this book left behind by a guest at my B&B. It is without a doubt one of the most joyful and inspiring books that I have read in a long time. Beautifully told by Peggy Pond Church, it is the story of Edith Warner and her life near Los Alamos during the thirties and forties. How she created a simple home from nothing and how it became a mecca for her neighbors the world famous physicists of Los Alanos and also the local Indians. They came to her house for dinner, to take a respite from their secluded work at the Lab and in coming to enjoy her good food came to enjoy her friendship and serentiy. She live in close proximity to the Indians of San Ildefonso, and also became their friend, loving them, their children, watching them grow and enjoy with them their ceremonies and rituals. It is a poetic book of simple life and a good one and the great beauty of northern New Mexico. We need more Edith Warners in this world

Notwithstanding the first reviewer's comments, as a former resident of Los Alamos, I find that Church's account comes far closer to the heart of the matter than does Frank Waters's treatment of the same subject, The Woman at Otowi Crossing.

Presents not only a history of the early days of Los Alamos but builds a wonderful picture of the woman who understood the deeper aspects of the land and its indigenes people.
Well worth the read.

The House at Otowi Bridge is a wonderful story of the impact that one woman can make on her time and place. The story is truly inspirational. I would like to have known Ms. Warner.

Peggy Pond Church does a lovely job retelling the story of Edith Warner and her time at Otowi Bridge. I loved this story. A Philadelphia school teacher sent to the dessert to recuperate, only to return to her urban life and realize she can no longer live there. She returns to the dessert and makes her way in the simplest of ways: a garden and a tea shop. Her story become history when The Manhattan Project begins in Los Alamos and she, through her friendship with Robert Oppenheimer, begins serving meals to the scientists. Edith Warner, the woman who took the dessert to live simply, became a first hand witness to the changing of our world.

As a fan of northern New Mexico as well as our nation's atomic history, I was expecting a bit more than this superficial look at the life of Edith Warner and her impact on the Los Alamas/San Ildefanso areas. While it's pretty good at conjuring up mental imagery, the writing is not terribly smooth. This is probably because Ms. Warner didn't appear to leave a very large diary, so the rest is filled in by the personal commentary of Ms. Pond Church who was a sporadic visitor to the "house" at best during the period and writes in a very different style than Ms. Warner. All in all, I just didn't feel it ever got to the heart of Ms. Warner's story, but it was a nice "read" nevertheless.

This is almost a prose poem about the beauties of the Los Alamos area and a life lived alone and apparently satisfyingly. Well, not entirely alone. Edith Warner, the subject of this biographical sketch, did live happily alone for a time -- how long a time? But then she was joined at the little house at Otowi Bridge by Tilano, a much older Indian man who was her companion until she died twenty-some years later. Edith was great friends with the Indians from the San Ildefonso pueblo, and with some of the scientists and support personnel at Los Alamos in the years when the bomb was being developed -- 1942 to 1945. It is this Los Alamos connection that has put her on the map, although her life was interesting enough in any case.

But if you have at all a practical intellect, you will chafe at what isn't included in the book. Life in this remote spot presented numerous challenges -- how were they met? Edith soon after going to Otowi Bridge began serving teas -- that's how she met Robert Oppenheimer -- and later Oppie arranged that she should serve dinners to a couple of groups from "the Hill" each evening. But how did she get the food? Where did she store it? Did she have kitchen or garden help, beyond what Tilano provided?
At some point a horse, a cow, and a dog appear in the narrative -- where did they come from? How much money might she have had and where did she keep it? She had a guest house too -- who did the laundry? Gasoline rationing during the war was mentioned as a problem, but for what would they have needed gas? Did she and Tilano have a car? Truck? Motorcycle? Where did she get the shirtwaist dresses she habitually wore? Most biographies fill in the blanks better than this.

Edith is presented as a rather otherworldly person who worked very hard, and no doubt that view of her is true. But it is too magical; it can't be the whole story -- where is the rest?