The story of a fascinating incredible woman who was responsible for our ability to put rockets into space. Without her, it’s possible that Wehrner von Braun would not be as well known as he is today. The story is told by her son, who has to research most of her history, since she never spoke about that part of her life. Even his father, who knew her back then, was not very helpful. A good book that could have been great if more details were known. ( )

Mary Sherman Morgan grew up dirt-poor in a North Dakota farm family that did not believe in the value of education. Nevertheless, she managed to make it to college, but hadn't even graduated before she was snapped up to work a wartime job as a chemist in a weapons factory. She then went on to become the only female engineer at North American Aviation, although they denied her the actual title of "engineer" due to her lack of a degree. There, she came up with a new rocket fuel mixture that allowed the US to launch its first satellite into space.

Her son, George Morgan, grew up knowing very little about her life, and when he learned about what she'd accomplished, he felt she ought to be given more recognition from the world at large. Hence this book. Here, he lightly sketches his own difficult relationship with his mother and describes some of his researches into her life, as well as how he came to write first a play about her life and then this biography. He also provides fictionalized accounts of various moments in her life, and in the lives of Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev, the heads of the US and Soviet rocket programs at the time.

Mary Sherman Morgan's life is certainly a remarkable one, and I am always interested in anything to do with the early days of the space program, so I did find this worth reading, but I can't say I found it entirely satisfying. In the end, one never gets a very good sense of exactly who this woman really was (something that seemed to ultimately elude even her son). And I'm really not a big fan of this particular style of "non-fiction" writing, in which scenes are dramatized complete with dialog and thoughts in people's heads that the author could have no way of actually knowing about. You can never be sure how much of what you're reading is anything like the truth, and how much the author simply invented out of his own mind. And in this case, based on the author's note at the end, it seems like he invented a lot. So, in the end, I'm not at all sure how much more I know now than I did when I started. ( )

I saw this book at the bookstore and was intrigued, but something about it made me hesitate, and I decided to check it out from the library instead. While I did enjoy this book, I think I'm pretty happy with this decision.

Mary Sherman Morgan's story was fascinating. Born to poor, abusive parents on an isolated farm in North Dakota, who had to be compelled by the state to send her to school. After graduation, she runs away from home to attend college to study chemistry. After a few years, she is recruited/pressured to drop out to "join the war effort," where she stars making TNT in a factory staffed almost entirely with women. After the war, of course, munitions jobs dry up and the ladies are pressured to retire and make way for the men returning home to look for jobs. Mary applies for and gets a job at North American Aviation anyway, where she builds such a reputation for herself that when the U.S. Army sends a colonel asking for NAA's best man to solve a propellant problem that Dr. van Braun can't crack, it's Mary who gets the job. And it's Mary who eventually solves it, playing a crucial part in the first launch of an American satellite into orbit (and getting the American space program back on track.)

This book is both fascinating and frustrating. Mary was an intensely private person, averse to photographs, who didn't leave much evidence of her life behind, not even min the form of stories shared with her son, who authored this book. George shares his search for any sort of documentation of his mother's career, which turns out to be mostly non-existent. (The documentation, not the career.) Much of her story is pieced together by interviews with Mary's co-workers, who don't want her legacy forgotten after her passing.

The book also seems torn between aspirations of what it wants to be. After I read a few favorite ringing passages to my husband, he said, "That's very theatrical." And I laughed. Of course it was, I just hadn't put the word to it yet. George Morgan is a playwright, and this book grew from a play he wrote about his mother. And as much as George tries to establish his mother's place in the space race, it's also intensely personal, in places more a memoir of his search for information. But as a memoir, it also leaves questions strangely unanswered, like why his father can't or won't fill in more details of his mother's personal story.

Despite any of these shortcomings, this is still a compelling story, and one that needs to be shared. ( )

This was very well written and makes me wonder just how many other stories like this one there is yet to discover, or has been lost completely. There seems to be many women who were behind so many important events from this time period that need their story told. ( )

Turned to this when the book club selection, Rise of the Rocket Girls, became too boring to slough through. It really doesn't overlap, which kind of surprises me, but while I wouldn't choose to read (either one) on my own, it's a not-so-bad reminder of the role of women in the 1930s-40s-50s. ( )