Half Life. A Novel

The USA Today bestselling author of InAnother Time reimagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curieusing a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one thatmirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and forscience if she'd made a different choice. In Poland in 1891, Marie Curie(then Marya Sklodowska) was engaged to a budding mathematician, KazimierzZorawski.
But when his mother insisted she was too poor and not good enough, hebroke off the engagement. A heartbroken Marya left Poland for Paris, where shewould attend the Sorbonne to study chemistry and physics. Eventually MarieCurie would go on to change the course of science forever and be the firstwoman to win a Nobel Prize. But what if she had made adifferent choice? What if she had stayed in Poland, married Kazimierz at the age of twenty-four, and never attended the Sorbonne ordiscovered radium? What if she had chosen a life of domesticity with a constanthunger for knowledge in Russian Poland where education for women was restricted, instead of studying science in Paris and meeting Pierre Curie?Entwining Marie Curie's real storywith Marya Zorawska's fictional one, Half Life explores loves lost anddestinies unfulfilled-and probes issues of loyalty and identity, gender andclass, motherhood and sisterhood, fame and anonymity, scholarship andknowledge.
Through parallel contrasting versions of Marya's life, JillianCantor's unique historical novel asks what would have happened if a greatscientific mind was denied opportunity and access to education. It examines howthe lives of one remarkable woman and the people she loved - as well as the worldat large and course of science and history-might have been irrevocably changedin ways both great and small.