A “mesmerizing” re-imagination of the final months of World War II (Kate Quinn, author of The Alice Network), Hannah’s War is an unforgettable love story about an exceptional woman and the dangerous power of her greatest discovery.

Berlin, 1938. Groundbreaking physicist Dr. Hannah Weiss is on the verge of the greatest discovery of the 20th century: splitting the atom. She understands that the energy released by her discovery can power entire cities or destroy them. Hannah believes the weapon’s creation will secure an end to future wars, but as a Jewish woman living under the harsh rule of the Third Reich, her research is belittled, overlooked, and eventually stolen by her German colleagues. Faced with an impossible choice, Hannah must decide what she is willing to sacrifice in pursuit of science’s greatest achievement.

New Mexico, 1945. Returning wounded and battered from the liberation of Paris, Major Jack Delaney arrives in the New Mexican desert with a mission: to catch a spy. Someone in the top-secret nuclear lab at Los Alamos has been leaking encoded equations to Hitler’s scientists. Chief among Jack’s suspects is the brilliant and mysterious Hannah Weiss, an exiled physicist lending her talent to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s mission. All signs point to Hannah as the traitor, but over three days of interrogation that separate her lies from the truth, Jack will realize they have more in common than either one bargained for.

Hannah’s War is a thrilling wartime story of loyalty, truth, and the unforeseeable fallout of a single choice.

Review:

Fascinating, pacey, and engaging!

Hannah’s War is an intriguing story that sweeps you away to Los Alamos, New Mexico in the final days of WWII where a female Jewish physicist is on the cusp of making history in a field dominated by men, the race to develop the first nuclear weapon is well and truly underway, and the search and investigation of potential Nazi spies is top priority.

The prose is atmospheric and descriptive. The characters are intelligent, passionate, anxious, and driven. And the plot is an entertaining tale about life, love, friendship, survival, tragedy, war, romance, loyalty, subterfuge, and the development of nuclear fusion.

Overall, Hannah’s War is a well-written, compelling debut by Eliasberg that incorporates a nice mix of real-life historical figures, insightful information, and plausible fiction in a tale loosely based on the brilliant accomplishments of Dr. Lise Meitner.

This novel is available now.

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