At the age of thirty-five, in 1928, Edith Warner moved from her home in Pennsylvania to northern New Mexico. She found a house to rent ""in the shadow of Los Alamos.""Warner's neighbors soon made regular visits to her ""tea room,"" getting acquainted, introducing her to their world and culture. These friends included the San Ildefonso Indians and later, in the 1940s, the scientists who arrived to work at the nearby top-secret Los Alamos Labs, including Robert Oppenheimer and Neils Bohr.After his introduction, outlining Warner's life, Patrick Burns presents Warner's letters, essays, journals, and her incomplete autobiography that survived in spite of her instructions they be burned upon her death. Her writings give a unique look at life in the traditional Native American world and at the edge of the modern era, represented by the Manhattan Project.