The Gadget is a young adult historical novel written by Paul Zindel published in 2001 by Random House.

[1] It tells the story of a 13-year-old boy named Stephen Orr, whose father is a physicist working on a covert project to develop the atomic bomb.

Set in 1945, the story begins with a 13-year-old named Stephen Orr, who has just reached the gates of the top secret military base in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

His father is a physicist there, working on making an atomic bomb.

Stephen and his new friend Alexei devise a plan to spy on his father and discover the truth about the project.