Simon & Schuster, New York, 2003, 1^st/1^st.  ISBN 0-684-86969-1.  Hard cover, 283 pages.  Unread copy, lower corners and spine ends bumped.  Dust jacket with price intact has light edge wear.  ‘… describes America at the brink of the Atomic Age. … Fos has returned To Tennessee from the trenches of France.  Intrigued with electricity, bioluminescence, and especially x-rays, he believes in science and the future of technology.  On a trip to the Outer Banks to study the Perseid meteor shower, he falls in love with Opal … Fos brings his new wife back to Knoxville where he runs a photography studio with his former Army buddy Flash. … Flash brings tragedy to the couple when his appetite for pleasure runs up against both the law and the Ku Klux Klan.  Fos and Opal are forced to move to Opal’s mother’s farm on the Clinch River, and soon they have a son, Lightfoot.  But when the New Deal claims their farm for the TVA, Fos seeks work at the Oak Ridge Laboratory – Site X in the government’s race to build the bomb.  And it is there, when Opal falls ill with radiation poisoning, that Fos’s great faith in science deserts him.’ (from front flap)