What if a catastrophic environmental disaster forced the Space Race in the 1950s into overdrive, with humanity scrambling to find a way to colonize outer space? Would that have also accelerated the pace at which women were allowed to serve as astronauts? Mary Robinette Kowal places a foundation on the real history of the first women pilots fighting for admission to the astronaut corps as well as the history of women computers at NASA, and speculates how 1950s social constraints would persist or change in her universe.

The protagonist of her story is Elma York, a relatively privileged Jewish woman former WASP and current math prodigy. She was able to succeed in the Air Force partly due to her father's role as a General and is now married to the lead engineer on the space missions. The author makes sure to emphasize her relative privilege, particularly compared to racialized women she works with, but doesn't really round out the racialized characters, so it ends up feeling a bit like tokenization.

One thing I really appreciated about this book was the depiction of Elma's struggle with anxiety. Although the representation of the treatment she pursues seems overly rosy given the history, it was good to see a protagonist's struggle with mental health issues and stigma without reinforcing that stigma or depicting it as a weakness.