The black-and-white picture shows young women in the 1940s enriching uranium for the world’s first atomic bomb. The neatly dressed women sit in a large factory, their hands on knobs and levers as they look sideways at a photographer.

It was this picture that prompted author and journalist Denise Kiernan to investigate and write “The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II.”