A Fierce Radiance: A Novel - Softcover

Belfer, Lauren

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061252522 ISBN 13: 9780061252525

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2011

Synopsis

A Washington Post Best Novel of the Year
An NPR Mystery of the Year

In the anxious days after Pearl Harbor, Life photojournalist Claire Shipley finds herself covering one of the nation's most important stories. At New York City's renowned Rockefeller Institute, researchers are racing to save thousands of wounded American soldiers and countless others by developing a miraculous new drug they call penicillin. For Claire, a single mother haunted by the loss of her young daughter—a death the miracle drug could have prevented—the story is cuttingly personal, especially after she unexpectedly begins to fall in love with the shy and brilliant head physician, James Stanton. But Claire isn't the only one interested in the secret cure. When a researcher dies under suspicious circumstances, the stakes become starkly clear: someone understands just how profitable the new drug could be—and will stop at nothing to get it. Now, with lives and a new love hanging in the balance, Claire will throw herself into harm's way to find a killer—no matter what price she may have to pay.

About this title

About the Author:

Lauren Belfer’s novel A Fierce Radiance was named a Washington Post Best Novel; an NPR Best Mystery; and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her debut novel, City of Light, was a New York Times bestseller as well as a number one Book Sense pick; a New York Times Notable Book; a Library Journal Best Book; and a Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. She lives in New York City.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Through the story of divorced 36-year-old Life photojournalist Claire Shiply, Belfer blends fact and fiction to describe the development of penicillin as a weapon of war in the 1940s. Seeing an early trial of the green-mold medicine—in which a dying man is miraculously cured of his infection, then dies when the medication runs out—Shiply is drawn to the story because of the earlier death of her young daughter from septicemia. She is drawn, too, to head researcher Dr. James Stanton, who is soon tapped to be national scientific coordinator to provide penicillin to treat battlefield infections. While Stanton travels to war zones, Claire is asked by government officials to watch for pharmaceutical companies neglecting production of unpatented penicillin to develop “cousin” antibacterials, even after her wealthy father has taken over one of the companies involved. Belfer (City of Light, 2003) combines life-and-death scenarios, romance, murder, and wartime reality at home and abroad, while satirizing industrialists who profit by dubious means and salve their consciences through philanthropy; and she warns that resistance to antibiotics could return us “to the era when otherwise healthy adults died from a scratch on the knee.” An engrossing and ambitious novel that vividly portrays a critical time in American history. --Michele Leber

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0061252522
• ISBN 13: 9780061252525
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 560