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    A Fierce Radiance: A Novel
    A Fierce Radiance: A Novel
    A Fierce Radiance: A Novel
    Audiobook18 hours

    A Fierce Radiance: A Novel

    Written by Lauren Belfer

    Narrated by Paula Christensen

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    A Washington Post Best Novel of the Year

    An NPR Best Mystery of the Year

    This suspenseful novel from the New York Times bestselling author of City of Light follows a photojournalist as she takes on an assignment that will involve blackmail, espionage, and murder—all in the early days of America’s involvement in World War II.

    In the anxious and uncertain days after Pearl Harbor, beautiful, talented Life magazine photojournalist Claire Shipley is assigned to cover the clinical testing of a new medication at the renowned Rockefeller Institute in New York. Still grieving the death of her young daughter from an infection, Claire is shocked by what she finds there: the doctors and researchers are attempting to cure fatal infections with a little-known, temperamental medicine made from green mold, which they’re calling penicillin—and that may be just the beginning of their breakthroughs.

    As the nation plunges into war, Claire begins an intense love affair with James Stanton, an Institute physician given the difficult, top-secret task of coordinating penicillin research for the military. Meanwhile Claire’s long-estranged father, a self-made millionaire entrepreneur, is realizing the potential of the new mold-derived medications to transform the very nature of human existence.

    When James’s sister and colleague dies under suspicious circumstances, the stakes involved in the antibiotic breakthrough become starkly clear. Caught between the extremes of war and greed, Claire finds her new relationship challenged in ways she could never have predicted.

    At once a thriller, a love story, a family saga, and a window into the tumultuous home front during World War II, A FIERCE RADIANCE will captivate readers.

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJul 27, 2010
    ISBN9780062040343
    Author

    Lauren Belfer

    Lauren Belfer’s novel A Fierce Radiance was named a Washington Post Best Novel; an NPR Best Mystery; and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her debut novel, City of Light, was a New York Times bestseller as well as a number one Book Sense pick; a New York Times Notable Book; a Library Journal Best Book; and a Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. She lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for A Fierce Radiance

    3.5/5

    142 ratings18 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      WWII era novel set in New York CityHistorical fiction weaving a story of military history, medical advancementespionage and love set in the later days of WWIIAs a photographer for LIFEmagazine Claire Shipley is sent to cover a story on the hard to produce, still experimental drug penicillin.The story is killed and the government chooses Claire to follow the penicillin trail.She is sent to keep" an eye on the big pharmaceutical companies who are supposed to be mass-producing patent-free penicillin for use on the battlefield but are really working on the much more profitable cousin drugs. ..."It is eyeopening to walk through a time frame when a simple scratch on the knee can lead to death.4.5 favoritehardcover530 pgWWII ear novel set in New York CityHistorical fiction weaving a story of military history, medical advancementespionage and love set in the later days of WWIIAs a photographer for LIFEmagazine Claire Shipley is sent to cover a story on the hard to produce, still experimental drug penicillin.The story is killed and the government chooses Claire to follow the penicillin trail.She is sent to keep" an eye on the big pharmaceutical companies who are supposed to be mass-producing patent-free penicillin for use on the battlefield but are really working on the much more profitable cousin drugs. ..."It is eyeopening to walk through a time frame when a simple scratch on the knee can lead to death.4.5 favoritehardcover530 pg
    • 5/5
      A Fierce Radiance crosses genres as a historical novel, a love story, a crime thriller, and a murder mystery. It captured my attention from the very beginning and held it throughout. Claire Shipley is a fascinating character as a photo journalist dealing with situations in her job, her family, and her relationships. Claire is assigned to a local hospital to report on a still experimental drug, penicillin, but her interest was more than professional. Penicillin could have saved the life of the daughter she lost to an infection. Through her work she also meets her love interest, Dr. James Stanton. The author brings to life the promise and heartache of experimental drugs. Problems arise when they cannot create the drugs quickly enough to give the patient a complete series, and some of the drugs have unexpected side effects. Competition among drug companies, the Federal Government, and greedy business men round out this superb crime drama. I am very impressed with the author’s depiction of a mother living with the grief of losing a child. In A Fierce Radiance, Lauren Belfer captured this aspect of Claire’s life perfectly. I’ve read other books that do not come close to portraying this appropriately. All of the characters and their roles are clearly defined and developed. Claire is not always likeable, but she is always interesting.
    • 4/5
      When divorced photojournalist Claire Shipley is assigned a story about the medical team at New York City's Rockefeller Institute which is about to test penicillin on a human patient for the first time, in the early winter of 1941, she also has a personal interest. Her three-year-old daughter Emily died of blood poisoning after a minor accident, and she is fascinated that there could soon be a away to prevent that fate for others. She's not the only one interested, either. The United States has just been pulled into World War II, and the government believes that penicillin and its "cousins" - other mold-based antibacterials that are still being researched - have great potential to reduce the war's casualty count. The pharmaceutical companies, for their part, see major commercial opportunity in these emerging wonder drugs.Claire's work for Life magazine draws her into the story, and her relationships with two men - Rockefeller researcher James Stanton and her father, Edward Rutherford, an early venture capitalist - pull her more deeply into it. Her personal connection is deepened not just by her guilt over her lost daughter, but her protectiveness toward her remaining child, her son Charlie.Belfer covers a lot of territory in A Fierce Radiance. She explores the research-and-development work that helped lay the foundations of the modern pharmaceutical industry. She draws a portrait of wartime life on the home front, and a detailed picture of 1940's New York City (which is when and where my parents grew up). She follows the investigation of a mysterious, sudden death that may be somehow connected to the drug research. And she ties it all together by bringing it back to Claire Shipley.The author takes an interesting approach to the narration, frequently shifting perspectives; sometimes the shifts occur within a single paragraph as she elaborates on the thoughts of two characters involved in a scene or conversation. Readers who prefer "show" to "tell" might be a bit annoyed by this, but I appreciated it. It really helped make the characters more vivid and layered to me, and helped me develop more empathy toward some of them than I might have had otherwise. Claire is a particularly well-drawn and complex character, which matters since the story is built around her. As a single mother with a thriving career, she may strike one as unusual for her time, but perhaps more approachable for our own, and I found her quite convincing. I found the development and complications of her relationship with Jamie Stanton - two "older" (pushing forty!) professionals with serious responsibilities, in wartime - convincing as well.At 544 pages (finished copy), this is a chunkster, but it was a fast and fascinating read, and an all-around terrific story. I easily lost myself in it, and I think it'll be a hard one to shake.
    • 3/5
      Claire Shipley is a photojournalist working for Life magazine in the early years of World War II. She’s assigned to document the medical trials of a new wonder drug – penicillin. While her story never sees print, she becomes involved in the intrigue surrounding the efforts by various big pharmaceutical companies to develop and produce penicillin in large quantities, as needed to fight battle infections during the war. Well this sounded much more interesting than it wound up being. I definitely enjoyed some aspects of the novel. I like reading medical histories, and the race to develop a procedure to mass produce penicillin was an important effort in World War II. Like many of the characters in the book, my family suffered the death of a loved one due to infection; my grandfather died of peritonitis resulting from a burst appendix. Penicillin and antibiotics that were developed later spared many such deaths. If Belfer had stayed focused on that exciting story I think I would have greatly enjoyed the book. But, Belfer included a romantic subplot between Claire and a lead scientist, Dr James Stanton (aka Jamie), as well as broken family ties, a murder, corporate espionage, Russian spies and unethical treatment of the Japanese families interred at various camps. There is just too much going on between the covers of this book for Belfer to give us a cohesive story, and I never got caught up in the novel.
    • 4/5
      Love Belfer's books! She writes Historical fiction with incredible detail.She is an in depth researcher that weaves stories of historical significance and accuracy with credible characters and human emotion. Her stories are educational.It is incredible to think that just 70 years ago people died from infection due to illness and minor injuries that we take for granted now.I didn't think I would enjoy the penicillin aspect of this story,but I did.I have a whole new outlook and respect for antibiotics!
    • 4/5
      Surprisingly compelling story about the discovery, testing and mass-production of penicillin. The competition between the pharmaceutical companies shows the underbelly of these companies desire for profits in the midst of great need.
    • 2/5
      I loved the basis of the book in which the scientists at the Rockefeller Institute are trying to develop and mass produce penicillin which they hope will prevent a scraped knee from developing into septicemia. Unfortunately, that thread gets lost at times in the personal history the author felt she needed for almost every individual in the book. From the moment Claire Shipley meets James Stanton on assignment she's sizing him up, the possibility of establishing a meaningful relationship with him or just a passing fling. This takes nearly a hundred pages and doesn't really move the story forward. The penicillin story really becomes more of a background story while the development of penicillin's "cousins" comes to the fore as Stanton's sister is murdered over something she's discovered which in turn is sold to Claire Shipley's father. The government is involved and playing dirty in order to make sure that the "cousins" research remains secret. It just took a long while for this book to get going.
    • 3/5
      I really thought I would like this book better. It seemed like it would hit all the high points that I enjoy in literature--historical fiction, scientific research, unsolved murder, a love story. And yet, as I read it I kept flipping to the back to see how much further I had to read until the end. I think the problem comes down to the story being too melodramatic to be believable.Claire Shipley is a divorced woman who works as a photographer for Life magazine. When she is sent to the Rockefeller Institute to take photos of a man being treated for a bacterial infection with the very new penicillin being produced there the story hits home for her. Her daughter, Emily, died of just such a bacterial infection when she was just 3 years old and the available antibiotics (sulfa drugs) couldn't do anything to stop the infection. Claire meets the scientist in charge of the experiment, Dr. James Stanton, and his sister, mycologist Tia Stanton. The patient responds well to the penicillin with his fever dropping and his wound improving. His wife and children come to see him and Claire gets pictures of the kids being shown the lab where Tia Stanton visits. Unfortunately, the supply of penicillin is limited and when it is used up the infection comes raging back. The patient dies very shortly after. This experiment does show that penicillin could cure bacterial infections if enough of it could be made. This is of great interest to the US government because they have just entered WWII and they know that many more soldiers die of infections than from enemy fire. Soon Dr. Stanton and his colleague Dr. Nick Colapinto are tapped to head up a project to get pharmaceutical companies to solve the problem of producing sufficient quantities of penicillin for the needs of the troops. Tia Stanton starts looking into finding a penicillin cousin from the hundreds of soil samples she has obtained from around the country and even across the world. Meanwhile, Claire and Jamies (!!!) are embarking on a romance. Claire has also commenced a relationship with her estranged father, the multi-millionaire Edward Rutherford. Just as Tia finds some success in her search she mysteriously dies. Was she despondent and committed suicide by jumping off the cliff surrounding the Institute? Seems unlikely. Did she go for a walk and accidentally fall off the cliff, as the enquiry into her death decides? Or was she pushed by someone hoping to obtain the sample she has been working on? Jamie really doesn't have time to grieve for his sister let alone question the official enquiry finding but something doesn't seem right. His love for Claire and hers for him does seem right but they are unable to spend much time together due to their work schedules. Meanwhile the war rages on and the government is determined nothing shall interfere with their quest for success. If that means a few lies get told and a few people are hushed up so be it.I think I would have appreciated this story more if the author didn't work so hard to make us believe that death from infection was just around the corner for everyone. I don't mean to downplay the importance of the development of penicillin but it seems like every person in the story had a friend or family member who died of infection. If that truly was the case then we would see more cases of people having to be treated for antibiotics for simple scrapes and wounds. And to name her two main characters Claire and Jamie (as in the Diana Gabaldon Outlander series) just grates on me.
    • 3/5
      This book is about the process of making penicillin a viable mass produced drug in the midst of WWII. Plus add romance and a bit of a murder mystery. A pretty good read.
    • 4/5
      This novel although set at the time of World War 2 covers very different subject matter - the development of a new miracle drug penicilin that we now take for granted. The book takes place both in New York City and at the war front. Imagine dying from a simple scratch gained after falling over. I knew nothing of this subject matter so found the book interesting - the development of the drug itself and the pharmaceutical companies obviously wanting to be first to succeed and therefore desiring to keep what they were doing secret from their competitors. There are interesting characters and a murder. All in all a good read.
    • 4/5
      Very thought provoking. I never gave any thought to life before antibiotics. Can you imagine dying from a blister from a new pair of shoes!
    • 5/5
      Excellent WW II fiction that takes place on the home front, mostly in New York City. Today we can hardly imagine the time before the discovery and development of antibiotics when a person could die from a scratch on the knee. And children routinely died from strept thorat and pneumonia. But the development of penicillin changed all of that.
    • 4/5
      Claire Shipley is a photographer on assignment for Life magazine in 1941, photographing the story of a new drug and how it might save lives, especially those of wounded soldiers and sailors. The drug is called penicillin and when her story is killed by publisher Henry Luce Claire wants to know why. Then a young researcher is killed and her notes on similar drugs are missing. But no one seems to be too interested in finding her killer. Does war force a different kind of morality on all of us? That is the question as we follow Claire through the next few years, her assignments, her relationships with her son, her ex-husband and her father, and with the heads of the research projects discovering the drugs, which are classified as "weapons of war."
    • 4/5
       A story based on the production of penicillin during WWII
    • 5/5
      Great book. Set in the early part of World War II. It's easy to be swept into the world of single mom, Claire Shipley during a time when it was uncommon for a woman to be divorced. She's an ambitious photographer for Life magazine who doesn't take no as an answer as she chases stories about the beginnings of the use of antibiotics during an age when people die from scratches to their knees. Claire's work crosses over into her everyday life taking the reading on an interesting journey.Author Lauren Belfer has done her research on the era and that coupled with her immense talent makes for compelling reading.
    • 4/5
      Terrific plot, great historical background,thought provoking
    • 4/5
      Most of us alive today can not remember a time when a small cut, a simple fall could be a death sentence, when a soar throat could turn septic, a case of pneumonia would leave a classmate's desk empty forever.A time before penicillin.It is just after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Claire Shipley, a staff photographer for Life magazine, is sent to New York's Rockefeller Institute to document the trials of a new experimental drug. But Claire's interest is more than professional, having lost her own 3 year old daughter to blood poisoning eight years before. Her own daughter is gone but Clair knows how many more might be saved if only a way can be found to produce this penicillin in sufficient quantities.Once the government realized the success of the trials, they also realize what the production of this drug to treat injured troops could mean to the war effort. Just as most of us do not remember a time before antibiotics, most of us also do not remember a time when many Americans though the Allies might lose the war and a time when the residents of NYC thought invasion was a real possibility. Penicillin could be a weapon that would change the outcome of the war, which at the moment was looking pretty grim. The stakes are huge..power, money, the very outcome of the war. There is a suspicious death that strikes close to home, espionage and, on a more personal level, Claire's new romance with Dr. Stanton, to round out this epic story.A Fierce Radiance is an historical novel, a thriller and a romance...and it succeeds in each to varying degrees.I am not usually a fan of historical novels, but this book is an exception. I think Belfer is very successful in recreating the WWII era, the mood, the fears, the shortages, the life in new York in the midst of World war II. Surprising, the whole issue of the development of penicillin is by far the most interesting part of the book and without question the story is at it's strongest when that subject is at the center.As a thriller, the book is fairly successful. I am a great fan of mysteries and this was a pretty good one, with an interesting police detective, enough red herrings, spies and corporate intrigue to keep me interested.But for me, the weakest link of the book was the romance between Claire and the good Doctor Jamie. Part of the problem was that I just didn't like him, from the moment, in the earliest pages of the book, when he seems to be spending more time considering how he will get Claire into his bed than tending to the dying man in front of him. Add in a few moral lapses, a dose of amnesia and a number of unexplained stupid decisions and I was not very vested in this romance.Overall, for me, A Fierce Radiance is good book than fell just short of being an excellent book by trying to keep just one too many plates in the air at the same time. It seems just a little confused about what kind of book it is and maybe, in trying to be too many things, falls just a little short. This book is at it's best when it zones in on the real history surrounding the development of penicillin and the changed world that discovery created. When that is at the heart of the story, it is a very entertaining book.
    • 5/5
      A Fierce Radiance crosses genres as a historical novel, a love story, a crime thriller, and a murder mystery. It captured my attention from the very beginning and held it throughout. Claire Shipley is a fascinating character as a photo journalist dealing with situations in her job, her family, and her relationships. Claire is assigned to a local hospital to report on a still experimental drug, penicillin, but her interest was more than professional. Penicillin could have saved the life of the daughter she lost to an infection. Through her work she also meets her love interest, Dr. James Stanton. The author brings to life the promise and heartache of experimental drugs. Problems arise when they cannot create the drugs quickly enough to give the patient a complete series, and some of the drugs have unexpected side effects. Competition among drug companies, the Federal Government, and greedy business men round out this superb crime drama. I am very impressed with the author’s depiction of a mother living with the grief of losing a child. In A Fierce Radiance, Lauren Belfer captured this aspect of Claire’s life perfectly. I’ve read other books that do not come close to portraying this appropriately. All of the characters and their roles are clearly defined and developed. Claire is not always likeable, but she is always interesting.