Hannah's War

January 27, 2020
Eliasberg’s fast-paced, insightful debut explores one woman’s anxiety about helping to create the world’s first nuclear weapon. Dr. Hannah Weiss, a Jew who escaped Nazi Germany, works with the Americans on the atom bomb in 1945 Los Alamos, N.Mex., where, thanks to her exceptional talent and stable personality, she fends off men’s flirtations and chauvinistic assumptions. Hannah is alternately excited by the work and sobered by its implications, feeling a “frisson of energy and enormity up and down her arms and neck” while testing a reactor. Meanwhile, Hannah’s colleagues circulate a petition about their concerns over the dangerous weapon, causing military intelligence to open an investigation into possible subversives on the team. The lead investigator, Maj. Jack Delaney, wants to know whether Hannah is actually spying for a Nazi physicist, but Jack’s attraction to Hannah’s “starchy self-determination” distracts him from the interrogation process as Hannah gains the upper hand, and suspicions, second-guessing, and simmering desire ensue between them. Clever phrasing and keenly developed characters add substance to the intrigue. Eliasberg’s triumphant tale of Hannah transcending anti-Semitism and the pitfalls of workplace romance will satisfy readers. Agent: Adriann Zurhellen, Foundry Literary + Media, LLC.

Orlagh Cassidy eloquently narrates this fictional account of a WWII-era physicist who is working on the atom bomb in Los Alamos while yearning for the love of her life in Berlin. Anticipating persecution as a Jew, Hannah escapes Germany and continues her work on the atom with the Americans in New Mexico. Portraying Hannah with a gentle Austrian accent, Cassidy captures the character's feminine beauty and scientific acuity. Major Jack Delaney is dispatched to Los Alamos to investigate suspicions that Hannah's loyalties may still lie with the Third Reich scientists she abandoned. Cassidy does well with the extended dialogues between Hannah and Jack. The more he is determined to ferret out Hannah's secrets, the more her revelations become both shrewd and mesmerizing. N.M.C. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine