Luminous Bodies

"Devon Jersild's beautiful novel is alchemic, bringing Marie Curie--the scientist, the lover, the mother, the immigrant, the Nobel Laureate--to life. This tense, moving, riveting story burns hot: it's historical fiction at its very best." --Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and Hour of the Witch

"Devon Jersild's writing vibrates with a unique energy. Her Luminous Bodies shows us how life's difficulties and contradictions can also light us with passionate possibilities." --Ann Beattie, author of Onlookers and The New Yorker Stories

Devon Jersild's Luminous Bodies--the fruit of years of deep research--portrays the tumultuous life of Marie Curie. In the vein of the biographical novels Georgia (Dawn Tripp) and Matrix (Lauren Groff), the narrative follows Marie from girlhood in Poland to the battlefields of World War I, focusing on her marriage, widowhood, and love affair with fellow scientist Paul Langevin--after which she was ostracized from society and the scientific community. It captures the exhilaration of discovery and uncovers the lifesaving role of Hertha Ayrton, the scientist and suffragist who drew Curie back from the brink of suicide.

In the popular imagination, Curie was all brilliance and unshakeable drive. Luminous Bodies reveals the vulnerable woman behind the legend, haunted by self-doubt, depression, and breakdowns. How did she endure all this and society's attacks, and still achieve so much? What sustained her rich emotional, sexual, and intellectual life--and what were the costs? Jersild explores these questions in this novel, as tender as it is compelling.