Word: townes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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BRING BAYWATCH TO YOUR TOWN...
Gail Godwin's 10th novel, Evensong (Ballantine; 405 pages; $25), is set in the very near future indeed, specifically the waning weeks of 1999. Millennial fever has reached even the idyllic and remote Smoky Mountain town of High Balsam, N.C. (winter pop. 1,000), where Margaret Bonner, 33, serves as rector of All Saints Episcopal Church. "Winter in the Great Smokies would shortly be upon us," Margaret says at the outset of her tale, "the winter that would see us into the next century and the new millennium. Other things were on their way to us as well, things...
Finally, a former High Balsam resident named Grace Munger has reappeared in town, hectoring everyone to join the "Millennium Birthday March for Jesus" that she is organizing, spurred on, she claims, by divine inspiration. Much of her bullying is directed at Margaret, who refuses to commit herself or her church to this sort of public demonstration. "We need less display," Margaret lectures Grace, "and more unassuming deeds behind the scenes." Privately, though, Margaret worries, "Am I just being a snob...
Tall and silver-haired, with softly reassuring blue eyes, Dr. Patrick Christopher Steptoe looked as if he'd just stepped out of a Marcus Welby rerun. In fact, the kindly doctor was a medical revolutionary. On July 25, 1978, as hundreds of reporters descended on the sleepy English mill town of Oldham, the 65-year-old obstetrician delivered the world's first "test-tube baby," a healthy, 5-lb. 12-oz. girl aptly named Louise Joy Brown. Conceived in a lab dish, or in vitro, from the egg and sperm of a working-class couple who had tried for years...
...rockets are hard to hide, and as Goddard's Nells grew steadily bigger, the town of Worcester caught on. In 1929, an 11-ft. missile caused such a stir the police were called. Where there are police there is inevitably the press, and next day the local paper ran the horse-laughing headline: MOON ROCKET MISSES TARGET BY 238,799 1/2 MILES. For Goddard, the East Coast was clearly becoming a cramped place to be. In 1930, with the promise of a $100,000 grant from financier Harry Guggenheim, Goddard and his wife Esther headed west to Roswell, N.Mex., where...