In Raising Harriet, 22-year-old Jessica unearths a photograph that compels her grandmother, Lorraine Coleman, to recount the 11-month period living in Uravan, Colorado where her husband worked as a geologist in 1952. During her time in the remote mining town, Lorraine formed a lasting friendship with Marjorie, a fellow USGS wife and mother, who helped her to set aside her religious upbringing and accept her four-year-old son’s claim: “I aint a boy.”

The novel’s setting highlights a little-known chapter in American history when the United States employed civilians to locate uranium during the nuclear arms race with the Soviets. Meanwhile, a Lavender Scare lurked in the shadows of the Red Scare. One casualty of the times, Christine Jorgensen, made international headlines as the first U.S. transgender woman who received hormone treatments and gender-affirming surgeries abroad. Years later, Uravan became a radioactive Superfund Site that government workers dismantled and buried. As a journalism graduate student in 2007, Jessica reckons with the family secret about her aunt, Harriet.