Atomic Anna

Rachel Barenbaum

- 2.9 • 7 Ratings

- $12.99

- $12.99

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Bookish

Named a Best Book of the Month by Buzzfeed

"The novel is masterfully plotted.”—New York Times Book Review

“Atomic Anna is a dazzling work of ingenuity and imagination.”―Téa Obreht,National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Inland

From the author of A Bend in the Stars, an epic adventure as three generations of women work together and travel through time to prevent the Chernobyl disaster and right the wrongs of their past.

Three brilliant women.
Two life-changing mistakes.
One chance to reset the future.

In 1986, nuclear scientist Anna Berkova is asleep in her bed in the Soviet Union when Chernobyl's reactor melts down. The energy surge accidentally sends her through time. When she wakes up, she's in 1992 and discovers Molly, her estranged daughter, shot in the chest. Should Anna travel in time to save her daughter or stop Chernobyl?

Anna goes to '60s Philadelphia, where Molly is coming of age as an adopted refusenik in a family full of secrets. Molly finds solace in comic books, drawing her own series, Atomic Anna. But when she meets volatile Viktor, their romance sets her life on a dangerous course. Anna then seeks out Molly's daughter, Raisa, in the '80s. Raisa is a lonely teen and math prodigy, who finds new issues of Atomic Anna in unexpected places. Each comic challenges her to solve equations leading to two impossible conclusions: Time travel is real and so is the strange old woman claiming to be her grandmother.

These three remarkable women must work together across time to prevent the greatest nuclear disaster of the twentieth century, but simply because you can change the past, does it mean you should?

APPLE BOOKS REVIEW

Bound by blood, three women piece together their future from the shards of their past in this mind-bending historical sci-fi story. Gifted scientist Anna watches in horror as the Chernobyl nuclear plant melts down—and as the radioactive leak hurtles her through time. Now Anna, her daughter, and her granddaughter must embark on a multigenerational quest to stop the disaster and change the course of their lives. Author Rachel Barenbaum—who bewitched us with her debut historical stunner, A Bend in the Stars—delivers an astonishing follow-up. We fell in love with Barenbaum’s lead women, each with their own richly developed, realistically flawed lives. Those compelling people are the beating heart of this epic tale about fighting against the forces of destiny. Pull up the covers and turn on Do Not Disturb, because we couldn’t fall asleep until we finished this transcendent, time-twisting tale.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JAN 10, 2022

Barenbaum (A Bend in the Stars) burnishes her reputation as an up-and-coming talent with this audacious time travel story. Anna Berkova, a Soviet nuclear scientist who works at Chernobyl, is asleep on the morning of the meltdown in 1986. The catastrophe transports her to 1992 Mount Aragats, Armenia, where she finds a trail of blood leading to her dying daughter, Manya, who's been shot. Before dying, Manya reveals that the amplifier her mother was working on had pulled her through a ripple in space-time, and that Berkova must travel farther into the future to save a teenage granddaughter, Raisa, she's never known. Barenbaum then unfolds the three women's stories, each of which is laced with tragedy and unfulfilled aspirations. Chapter headings counting down to Manya's death maintain tension, as her efforts to express herself as a comic book author with Atomic Anna, a superhero modeled on what she knows of her mother, play out against her battle with substance abuse. Raisa, a math prodigy, also must overcome challenges, such as being placed in foster care after Manya's conviction for drug possession, to reach her potential. The threads build toward a deeply satisfying denouement, and the author uses the sci-fi plot device to explore parent-child relationships and questions about the morality of changing the past. Barenbaum dares greatly, and succeeds. Eve Attermann, WME.

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