ATOMIC LOVE

A beautifully written novel of betrayal, love, desire, and secrets.

Chicago, 1950. Rosalind Porter has always defied expectations - in her work as a physicist on the Manhattan Project to design the atomic bomb, and in her passionate love affair with coworker Thomas Wheeler. Five years after the end of both, her guilt over the results of her work and her heartbreak over Wheeler are intertwined. She has almost succeeded in resigning herself to a more conventional life.

Then Wheeler gets back in touch - and so does the FBI. Agent Charlie Szydlo wants Roz to spy on Wheeler, whom the FBI suspects of selling nuclear secrets to Russia. Despite her better instincts, Roz still loves Wheeler and is not sure she can trust Charlie. And Charlie, whose time as a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp haunts him, is not sure he can trust himself, especially around Roz. His interest in her has become more than professional.

As it turns out, he's not the only spy interested in Roz - but the Russians definitely don't have her best interests in mind.

Jennie Fields, who is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, lives in Nashville. Her most recent novel, The Age of Desire (Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, August 2012), was a New York Times Editor's Choice and has just been optioned for film.