Universe of Two: A Novel

Summary

From
the critically acclaimed author of The Baker’s Secret and The
Curiosity comes a novel of conscience, love and redemption

Graduating
from Harvard at the height of World War II, brilliant mathematician Charlie Fish is assigned to the Manhattan Project. Working with some of the age’s greatest
scientific minds, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Leo
Szilard, Charlie is assigned the task of designing and building the detonator
of the atomic bomb.

As he performs the work
Charlie suffers a crisis of conscience, which his wife, Brenda—unaware of the
true nature of Charlie’s top-secret task—mistakes for self-doubt. She urges him
to set aside his qualms and continue. But once the bombs strike Hiroshima and
Nagasaki and Brenda realizes the truth, the feelings of culpability devastate them both.

At the war’s end, Charlie
receives a scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in physics at Stanford—an opportunity
he and Brenda hope will allow them a fresh start. But the past proves
inescapable. Haunted by guilt,
Charlie and Brenda know that they must do something to make amends for the evil
they helped to bring into the world.

Based
on the real life of Charles B. Fisk, Universe of Two combines riveting
historical drama with a poignant love story. Stephen Kiernan has conjured a
remarkable account of two people struggling to heal their consciences and find
peace in a world forever changed.