Rachel Barenbaum

Three brilliant women. Two life-changing mistakes. One chance to reset the future. In 1986, renowned nuclear scientist, Anna Berkov, is sleeping in her bed in the Soviet Union when Chernobyl's reactor melts down. At that exact moment she tears through time--her first jump - and it's an accident. When she opens her eyes, she's landed in 1992 only to discover Molly, her estranged daughter, shot in the chest. Molly, with her dying breath, begs Anna to go back in time and stop the disaster, to save Molly's daughter Raisa, and put their family's future on a better path. In the '60s, Molly is coming of age as an adopted refusenik in a Russian enclave of Philadelphia. Her family is full of secrets and a past they won't share. She finds solace in comic books, drawing her own series, Atomic Anna, inspired by her birth mother, and she's determined to make it in the world as an artist. When she meets the volatile, charismatic Viktor, their romance sets her life on a very different course. In the '80s, Raisa, a math prodigy, is a lonely teenager with her mother lost to a life of drugs. She devotes herself to studying until a quiet, handsome boy moves in across the street and an odd old woman claiming to be her biological grandmother begins asking for her help. As Raisa finds new issues of Atomic Anna in unexpected places, she notices each comic challenges her to solve equations leading to one impossible conclusion: time travel. And she finally understands what she has to do. Atomic Anna is a sweeping journey across time, space and the many forms of love. As these remarkable women take responsibility for their choices and work together to prevent the greatest nuclear disaster of the 20th century, they grapple with the power their discoveries hold. No one can control how knowledge is used when it's out in the world, and just because you can change the past, does it mean you should?

Atomic Anna

For fans of All the Light We Cannot See and The Women in the Castle comes a riveting literary novel that is at once an epic love story and a heart-pounding journey across WWI-era Russia, about an ambitious young doctor and her scientist brother in a race against Einstein to solve one of the greatest mysteries of the universe. In Russia, in the summer of 1914, as war with Germany looms and the Czar's army tightens its grip on the local Jewish community, Miri Abramov and her brilliant physicist brother, Vanya, are facing an impossible decision. Since their parents drowned fleeing to America, Miri and Vanya have been raised by their babushka, a famous matchmaker who has taught them to protect themselves at all costs: to fight, to kill if necessary, and always to have an escape plan. But now, with fierce, headstrong Miri on the verge of becoming one of Russia's only female surgeons, and Vanya hoping to solve the final puzzles of Einstein's elusive theory of relativity, can they bear to leave the homeland that has given them so much? Before they have time to make their choice, war is declared and Vanya goes missing, along with Miri's fiancé. Miri braves the firing squad to go looking for them both. As the eclipse that will change history darkens skies across Russia, not only the safety of Miri's own family but the future of science itself hangs in the balance. Grounded in real history -- and inspired by the solar eclipse of 1914 -- A Bend in the Stars offers a heartstopping account of modern science's greatest race amidst the chaos of World War I, and a love story as epic as the railways crossing Russia.

A Bend in the Stars

Underbar läsning för alla som älskade Ljuset vi inte ser av Anthony Doerr. Sommaren 1914, Ryssland. Medan hotet om krig med Tyskland tornar upp sig vid horisonten och tsarens armé tar ett allt hårdare grepp om den judiska befolkningen står Miri Abramov och hennes bror Vanya en briljant fysiker inför ett nästintill omöjligt beslut. Efter att deras föräldrar drunknat under ett flyktförsök till Amerika uppfostrades syskonen av sin babushka, en vida känd äktenskapsförmedlerska som lärt dem att försvara sig själva till varje pris och att alltid ha en flyktplan förberedd. Men nu, när Miri står på gränsen till att bli en av ett fåtal kvinnliga ryska kirurger och hennes bror Vanya febrilt arbetar med att hitta de sista pusselbitarna i Einsteins relativitetsteori, är frågan om de klarar av att lämna det hemland som gett dem så mycket. Innan de hunnit fatta ett beslut slungas landet in i krig och både Vanya och Miris fästman Yuri försvinner spårlöst. Medan Miri riskerar liv och lem i sitt sökande efter dem närmar sig en historisk solförmörkelse, och snart står inte bara familjens säkerhet utan även hela vetenskapens framtid på spel. Rachel Barenbaum har studerat ekonomi, filosofi och litteratur vid Harvard. Efter några år som fondmäklare valde hon att satsa på litteraturen. Hon recenserar böcker i bland annat LA Review of Books. I ljuset från stjärnorna är hennes debutroman som bland annat valts ut till New York Times Summer Selection. Hon bor med man och tre barn i Brookline.

Rachel Barenbaum

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