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Rachel Barenbaum

Biography

Rachel Barenbaum

Rachel Barenbaum’s debut novel, A BEND IN THE STARS, was a Boston Globe bestseller, a New York Times Summer Reading Selection, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. Rachel is a prolific writer and reviewer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Tel Aviv Review of Books, Literary Hub and Dead Darlings. She is an Honorary Research Associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University and is a graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator. She founded and runs the podcast "Debut Spotlight." In a former life, she was a hedge fund manager and a spin instructor. She has degrees from Harvard in Business, and Literature and Philosophy. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Books by Rachel Barenbaum

Atomic Anna
by Rachel Barenbaum - Fiction

In 1986, renowned nuclear scientist Anna Berkova is sleeping in her bed in the Soviet Union when Chernobyl’s reactor melts down. It’s the exact moment she tears through time --- and it’s an accident. When she opens her eyes, she’s landed in 1992 only to discover Molly, her estranged daughter, shot in the chest. Molly, with her dying breath, begs Anna to go back in time and stop the disaster, to save Molly’s daughter Raisa, and put their family’s future on a better path. As these remarkable women work together to prevent the greatest nuclear disaster of the 20th century, they grapple with the power their discoveries hold. Just because you can change the past, does it mean you should?

A Bend in the Stars
by Rachel Barenbaum - Fiction, Historical Fiction

In Russia, in the summer of 1914, as war with Germany looms and the Czar's army tightens its grip on the local Jewish community, Miri Abramov and her brilliant physicist brother, Vanya, are facing an impossible decision. With fierce, headstrong Miri on the verge of becoming one of Russia's only female surgeons, and Vanya hoping to solve the final puzzles of Einstein's elusive theory of relativity, can they bear to leave the homeland that has given them so much? Before they have time to make their choice, war is declared and Vanya goes missing, along with Miri's fiancé. Miri braves the firing squad to go looking for them both. Not only the safety of Miri's own family but the future of science itself hangs in the balance.