Atomic Fiction with Author Leslie Schoveer

Leslie Shoveer is the author of Fission a book set in the early atomic age right as the bomb becomes a reality. Loosely based on family stories, this is a delightful read and an even more delightful conversation.

More about the book: Fission tells the story of nineteen-year-old Doris Friedman, who gives up her dreams of becoming a concert pianist or lawyer when she marries Rob in 1941 and has a sickly, premature baby. Within months, Rob is recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, and the young family moves to Oak Ridge. Just like fission splits an atom’s nucleus, Doris’s marriage threatens to break her heart in two, as she struggles to nurture her daughter while Rob works around the clock. Doris befriends Betty, a Southern debutante. Despite their different backgrounds, the two women sustain each other through difficult moments: Betty’s miscarriage, Rob’s radiation exposure, and his subsequent attempt to enlist to fight at the front. Doris falls for an army engineer—only to realize that he may be a Soviet spy. Should she turn him in and risk damaging her marriage? As the end of the war nears, Doris must decide what’s most important—and what she’s willing to lose.

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