A little while ago I attended a reading of A Fierce Radiance by Lauren Belfer. The novel takes place in the United States and opens just after Pearl Harbor has occurred. The story explores how penicillin and other antibiotics were developed and how they changed peoples’ lives. Prior to antibiotics, people died of the merest scrape – Lauren recounted how people could even die of a blister on the foot. Penicillin had actually been invented in the 1920s, but could not physically be put to use with the present technology. It was not until the causalities of World War II were tallying out that scientists felt pressured to re-explore penicillin, in a way that Ms. Belfer describes as “trial and error”. The potential for antibiotics quickly shot up and provided rapid growth within the pharmaceutical industry: “An industry that did not even exist in the 1940s was a billion dollar business by the 1950s,” says Belfer, who was very passionate about the history of her subject.
Belfer says she chose her narrator because she wanted someone who could plausibly be amid the folds of excitement occurring in medicine at the time. As a photo journalist, she could narrate from the heart of the goings-on; a working woman in a man’s world. As part of her research for her novel, Lauren read every issue of LIFE Magazine from 1939-1945. Articles from the time had subject lines as varied as what to do in the event of an attack on US soil, to fashions and lifestyle articles. She explained how reading historical items that would have been read by Americans at the time really helped her understand the mentality of the period. She even revealed that reading these accounts demolished for her any belief in “the myth that Americans didn’t know about what Hitler was doing to the Jews over in Europe.”
I really enjoyed this talk because it was a subject on which I am quite unfamiliar, and I feel like I learned a lot. The history of science is always interesting to me, but medicine is a science I’ve yet to explore in historical fiction. A Fierce Radiance is a perfect introduction. To learn more about Lauren Belfer and A Fierce Radiance, visit the author on her website.
Thanks for a post which was different and interesting!
Thank YOU, Mystica, for always having something nice to say
I am looking forward to reading this novel. I really enjoyed her debut, City of Light. You might like it, too.
CITY OF LIGHT sounded fascinating! I am trying to get into some more American HF reads lately – maybe it's just the patriotic spirit I'm feeling b/c of the holiday tomorrow…But I really don't read enough American HF and there is some great stuff out there to explore!
This book is on my list! Thanks for sharing!
Sigh, another must read for my ever growing list.Her comment about reading contemporary articles is so true. I collect old books and reading them, both fiction and non-fiction, gives you a good insight and feel for the time period.
A Fierce Radiance was an amazing novel, and I’m so bummed I missed out on Lauren Belfer’s reading this summer, but I did get to meet her at BEA (gushing in the most embarrassing way).
I’m a little obsessed with books written in the 1940s, but this one had so many layers to it – murder mystery, medicine, government, war, women in the workplace, etc. Loved it.