Atomic Love
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3.9 • 51 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher 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?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fields's mostly predictable historical romance (after The Age of Desire) gets a boost from its crackerjack heroine, Rosalind "Roz" Porter, a talented young scientist and veteran of the Manhattan Project. Roz lost her job after the implosion of an affair with coworker Thomas Weaver and a report accusing her of being "emotionally unstable" in 1946, leaving her brokenhearted and underemployed as a Chicago salesclerk. When Weaver returns to the Windy City in 1950 to rekindle their relationship, she gives him the cold shoulder until FBI agent Charlie Szydlo asks her to reunite with Weaver to find out what he knows about information passed to the Soviets. Though Roz sleeps with Weaver both for pleasure and to get him to talk, she falls in love with Charlie, who reciprocates her feelings. Meanwhile, Soviet agents bug Roz's apartment and start following her, and Weaver disappears, leaving behind an ominously bloodied apartment. A secondary story about Roz's older sister underscores women's frustrations with traditionally female roles in American society, though it does little to advance the plot. Romance fans will delight in the smoldering affection between Roz and Charlie, but the Cold War espionage thread involving Weaver fizzles. Still, as escapist fare, Fields's steamy adventure gets the job done.
