A Bend in the Stars

February 18, 2019
Set in 1914 Kovno, Russia, Barenbaum’s rousing debut follows two headstrong siblings striving to build their lives amid the fog and confusion of impending war. Jewish Miri Abramov and her fiancé, Yuri, both work as doctors, but Miri is often shunned (even by patients) in a society where a woman surgeon is so uncommon that some even believe she is a witch. Miri’s brother, Vanya, is a brilliant physicist bent on expanding and/or disproving Albert Einstein’s still unpublished theory of relativity. He believes that proof of his equations lies in the August 1914 solar eclipse, which locals see as an omen of the devil. Vanya hopes to photograph the celestial phenomenon to show that light, in fact, bends as day turns into night. He also hopes to sell a photograph to American scientists, thereby buying safe passage for him, Miri, and Yuri. But as WWI intensifies, Miri is called away to the front lines, and Vanya must risk being captured to complete his observations. Barenbaum deepens the narrative with strong secondary characters marked by competing desires, such as the passions of Russian soldier Sasha Petrov and the deviousness of Russian Kir, who is trying to steal intellectual property. Fans of Kristin Hannah will enjoy Barenbaum’s exhilarating tale.

This audiobook is not beautifully written, but two accomplished narrators do everything they can to make it gripping listening. Granted, it is not easy to make the calculations of relativistic physics (around which much of the story revolves) exciting, but there is a great deal of chasing around western Russia in 1914. Plummer, narrating the chapters from female points of view, and Ballerini, taking the males, use their skills to bring out every bit of drama. They are especially good at transforming the characters, who are fairly flat as written, into reasonable facsimiles of human beings. There are also train rides, fights, narrow escapes, anti-Semitism, plagiarism, and photographs of a total eclipse. D.M.H. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine