Steve Ortley grapples with his grandfather’s legacy and the decision he made in 1945 that will haunt him and his family forever. As he stands at his grandfather’s gravesite, Steve is transported back in time to the bar of the La Fonda Hotel, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, thirty miles from Los Alamos. People from the town meet to drink, gossip, and trade theories about the activity on the Hill, where the scientists of the Manhattan Project are developing the atom bomb. But sometimes over drinks at the hotel bar, false information about the Manhattan Project is leaked to mislead suspicious locals and Soviet infiltrators, who cultivate workers on the Hill to trade information for money, or because they are sympathetic to the Communist cause. It is a moment in history when many in this desert town have secrets. Who can be trusted? The bartender? The traveling businessman? The German-born operator of a rooming house? In the midst of the secrecy, Steve’s grandfather, a young Los Alamos engineer, falls in love and, torn by a battle between his patriotism and his conscience, confronts a future that threatens his family.