The Atomic Weight of Love

Author: Elizabeth J. Church
Publisher: Fourth Estate
ISBN: 9780008209292
Category : Interpersonal relations
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A luminous and enthralling story of birds and science, ambition and sacrifice, revolutions - both big and small - and the late blooming of an unforgettable woman. I first loved him because he taught me the flight of a bird. I was too young to realise that what I really yearned to know was why birds take flight - and why, sometimes, they refuse. Meridian Wallace has lived through the Second World War, the atomic age, the Vietnam War and the dawn of the new millennium - yet she has always been torn between who she is and who circumstances demand her to be. In 1941, spirited, ambitious and determined to prove worthy of the sacrifices her mother made for her, Meridian won a place at the University of Chicago to study ornithology. The last thing she expected was to fall in love with a man two decades older: her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone - or for him to be recruited to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to take part in a mysterious wartime project. When Meridian defers her plans to join him, she agrees to give Alden a year of her life. But this is a world, and a time, in which a wife cannot be a scientist and a woman cannot choose her own destiny. What begins as an electrifying intellectual partnership soon evolves into something quite different. As the decades pass, Meridian strives to resist the clipping of her wings. It is a choice that will make her enemies and bring her heartache, but it also opens up unexpected possibilities: of freedom, and friendship and transformation...

The Atomic Weight of Love

Author: Elizabeth J. Church
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 161620611X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
In her sweeping debut novel, Elizabeth J. Church takes us from the World War II years in Chicago to the vast sun-parched canyons of New Mexico in the 1970s as we follow the journey of a driven, spirited young woman, Meridian Wallace, whose scientific ambitions are subverted by the expectations of her era. In 1941, at seventeen years old, Meridian begins her ornithology studies at the University of Chicago. She is soon drawn to Alden Whetstone, a brilliant, complicated physics professor who opens her eyes to the fundamentals and poetry of his field, the beauty of motion, space and time, the delicate balance of force and energy that allows a bird to fly. Entranced and in love, Meridian defers her own career path and follows Alden west to Los Alamos, where he is engaged in a secret government project (later known to be the atomic bomb). In married life, though, she feels lost and left behind. She channels her academic ambitions into studying a particular family of crows, whose free life and companionship are the very things that seem beyond her reach. There in her canyons, years later at the dawn of the 1970s, with counterculture youth filling the streets and protests against the war rupturing college campuses across the country, Meridian meets Clay, a young geologist and veteran of the Vietnam War, and together they seek ways to mend what the world has broken. Exquisitely capturing the claustrophobic eras of 1940s and 1950s America, The Atomic Weight of Love also examines the changing roles of women during the decades that followed. And in Meridian Wallace we find an unforgettable heroine whose metamorphosis shows how the women’s movement opened up the world for a whole generation.

The Atomic Weight of Love

Author: Elizabeth J Church
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0008209316
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Book Description
A luminous and enthralling story of birds and science, ambition and sacrifice, revolutions – both big and small – and the late blooming of an unforgettable woman.

All the Beautiful Girls

Author: Elizabeth J. Church
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0399181075
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
“An exquisitely crafted novel of love discovered and friendship found.”—Martha Hall Kelly, author of Lilac Girls Ruby’s life glitters with success, but she still must conquer her tragic past and discover what love really looks like. Lily Decker never meant to become a showgirl. As a young girl in small-town Kansas, she danced to forget the pain of losing her family in a car accident. And dancing made her feel beautiful when the attentions of her Uncle Miles only brought shame. In 1967, Lily is grown and ready to leave her past behind. She changes her name to Ruby Wilde and heads to the Rat Pack’s Las Vegas to make a name for herself as a troupe dancer. However, the competition is fierce and she finds work as a showgirl, instead, doing fan-kicks in sky-high headdresses and sparkling costumes. Her new life brims with glamour and excitement, but something is still missing. Is it love? What choices will she make to feel whole again, and at what cost? With her uncanny understanding of the hidden lives of women, Elizabeth J. Church captures the iconic extravagance of an era and the bravery of a woman who blazes her own path to freedom. Praise for All the Beautiful Girls “[Elizabeth] Church’s lively coming-of-age tale transports us to a world of ostrich-plumed headdresses and pinky-ringed mobsters while tracing a tumultuous quest for acceptance and love.”—People “A gorgeously written novel with the bite of a gin martini, All the Beautiful Girls goes beyond the splashy, gaudy dazzle of Las Vegas in the sixties to reveal the beating heart beneath the glamorous façade of a showgirl with big ambitions.”—Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of At the Water’s Edge “A stirring bildungsroman that follows a girl from trauma in 1957 Kansas to self-discovery in 1960s Las Vegas . . . Church paints an unflinching, frequently heartbreaking portrait of a resilient young woman’s coming-of-age set against an exciting, glamorous backdrop.”—Publishers Weekly “Church’s appreciation of language is apparent as she masterfully creates pictures with words . . . All the Beautiful Girls provides a delightful antidote to cold and dark mid-winter days.”—Associated Press “A beautifully rendered tale of personal redemption filled with friendship, loss, extravagant furs, and feathery headdresses.”—Kirkus Reviews

An Atomic Romance

Author: Bobbie Ann Mason
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307430634
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
This provocative, rollicking story is the much-anticipated new novel–the first in over a decade–from acclaimed author Bobbie Ann Mason. In An Atomic Romance we meet Reed Futrell, a sexy, thoughtful hero who grapples with radioactive contamination, a midlife crisis, and string theory–all while falling in love. Reed is an engineer at a uranium-enrichment plant near a riverside city in heartland America. He has deep roots in this community: He was raised there; his father worked at the very same plant before him. And it was here that Reed met, married, and then divorced his wife. Reed spends countless nights camping at a local wildlife preserve, gazing at the stars, fishing and hunting–that is, until deformed frogs are discovered at the site. Though his father was killed in a tragic accident at the atomic plant years ago, Reed stays on, proud to perform demanding and dangerous work for the benefit of the nation. As for the radioactive “incidents” he has endured, Reed prefers to think about other things–Hubble photographs of distant galaxies, Albert Einstein, his dog. Reed’s casual attitude toward danger infuriates his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Julia, as much as his quirky mind and muscular body intrigue her. Julia, a biologist, is truly Reed’s match–or maybe more than his match. They both are witty, curious, and fascinated by science. Indeed, their courtship began with banter about Stephen Hawking’s theories of space-time, and ever since it has been an up-and-down adventure of sexual attraction, intellectual game-playing, and long silences when Julia refuses to return Reed’s calls. When news reports reveal evidence of radioactive pollution in the land surrounding the plant, Reed and Julia’s relationship faces an unprecedented challenge. In An Atomic Romance, Bobbie Ann Mason delivers a brilliant novel set against a backdrop of atomic power: a love story between a motorcycle-riding loner and an independent, strong-minded biologist; between the peaceful present in a typical American community and the nation’s violent nuclear past; and, finally, between a good man and the work he takes pride in, though it may be putting his life in danger.

The Atomic Weight of Love

Author: Elizabeth J. Church
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 161620690X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Maman's Homesick Pie

Author: Donia Bijan
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1565129571
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
For Donia Bijan’s family, food has been the language they use to tell their stories and to communicate their love. In 1978, when the Islamic revolution in Iran threatened their safety, they fled to California’s Bay Area, where the familiar flavors of Bijan’s mother’s cooking formed a bridge to the life they left behind. Now, through the prism of food, award-winning chef Donia Bijan unwinds her own story, finding that at the heart of it all is her mother, whose love and support enabled Bijan to realize her dreams. From the Persian world of her youth to the American life she embraced as a teenager to her years at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris (studying under the infamous Madame Brassart) to apprenticeships in France’s three-star kitchens and finally back to San Francisco, where she opened her own celebrated bistro, Bijan evokes a vibrant kaleidoscope of cultures and cuisines. And she shares thirty inspired recipes from her childhood (Saffron Yogurt Rice with Chicken and Eggplant and Orange Cardamom Cookies), her French training (Ratatouille with Black Olives and Fried Bread and Purple Plum Skillet Tart), and her cooking career (Roast Duck Legs with Dates and Warm Lentil Salad and Rose Petal Ice Cream). An exhilarating, heartfelt memoir, Maman’s Homesick Pie is also a reminder of the women who encourage us to shine.

Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

Author: Lydia Millet
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156031035
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 548

Book Description
Millet's latest novel is a black-comic tour de force depicting the "second coming" of atomic bomb creators Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard. Despite being dead, these scientists are spotted in Santa Fe by a shy librarian, who joins them on a pilgrimage to Washington, D.C.

The Last Days of Café Leila

Author: Donia Bijan
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616208031
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
“A glorious treat awaits you at the literary table of Donia Bijan.” —Adriana Trigiani Set against the backdrop of Iran’s rich, turbulent history, this exquisite debut novel is a powerful story of food, family, and a bittersweet homecoming. When we first meet Noor, she is living in San Francisco, missing her beloved father, Zod, in Iran. Now, dragging her stubborn teenage daughter, Lily, with her, she returns to Tehran and to Café Leila, the restaurant her family has been running for three generations. Iran may have changed, but Café Leila, still run by Zod, has stayed blessedly the same—it is a refuge of laughter and solace for its makeshift family of staff and regulars. As Noor revisits her Persian childhood, she must rethink who she is—a mother, a daughter, a woman estranged from her marriage and from her life in California. And together, she and Lily get swept up in the beauty and brutality of Tehran. Bijan’s vivid, layered story, at once tender and elegant, funny and sad, weaves together the complexities of history, domesticity, and loyalty and, best of all, transports readers to another culture, another time, and another emotional landscape.

Atomic Love

Author: Jennie Fields
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593085345
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
"A novel of science, love, espionage, beautiful writing, and a heroine who carves a strong path in the world of men. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing left to want."--Ann Patchett, author The Dutch House "A highly-charged love story that reveals the dangerous energy at the heart of every real connection...Riveting."--Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing Love. Desire. Betrayal. Her choice could save a nation. Chicago, 1950. Rosalind Porter has always defied expectations--in her work as a physicist on the Manhattan Project and in her passionate love affair with colleague Thomas Weaver. Five years after the end of both, her guilt over the bomb and her heartbreak over Weaver are intertwined. She desperately misses her work in the lab, yet has almost resigned herself to a more conventional life. Then Weaver gets back in touch--and so does the FBI. Special Agent Charlie Szydlo wants Roz to spy on Weaver, whom the FBI suspects of passing nuclear secrets to the enemy. Roz helped to develop these secrets and knows better than anyone the devastating power such knowledge holds. But can she spy on a man she still loves, despite her better instincts? At the same time, something about Charlie draws her in. He's a former prisoner of war haunted by his past, just as her past haunts her. As Rosalind's feelings for each man deepen, so too does the danger she finds herself in. She will have to choose: the man who taught her how to love . . . or the man her love might save?