The Sound of a Thousand Stars

A Novel

By: Rachel Robbins

Narrated by: Sarah Skaer

Oppenheimer meets Hidden Figures in this sweeping historical debut where two Jewish physicists form an inseverable bond amidst fear and uncertainty.

Sure to captivate listeners of Kate Quinn and Bonnie Garmus, The Sound of a Thousand Stars eerily mirrors modern-day questions of wartime ethics and explores what it means to survive—at any cost.

Alice Katz is a young Jewish physicist, one of the only female doctoral students at her university, studying with the famed Dr. Oppenheimer. Her well-to-do family wants her to marry a man of her class and settle down. Instead, Alice answers her country’s call to come to an unnamed city in the desert to work on a government project shrouded in secrecy.

At Los Alamos, Alice meets Caleb Blum, a poor Orthodox Jew who has been assigned to the explosives division. Around them are other young scientists and engineers who have quietly left their university posts to come live in the desert.

No one seems to know exactly what they are working on–what they do know is that it is a race and that they must beat the Nazis in developing an unspeakable weapon. In this atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, and despite their many differences, Alice and Caleb find themselves drawn to one another.

Inspired by the author’s grandparents and sure to appeal to fans of Good Night, Irene, The Sound of a Thousand Stars is a propulsive novel about love in desperate times, the consequences of our decisions, and the roles we play in history.

©2024 Rachel Robbins (P)2024 Random House Audio

Amazing look at the times we never hear about.

This is well written, and god writing matters.
It draws the curtain away a bit about how The Manhattan Project workers worked on the process for the bomb, the very scary nature of what they were working with, and that small closed society.
It also addresses how woman in science ( and likely other professions as well) were treated.
There were a few things that needed some fact checking, mostly medical things (there would not been multiple beeping machines at a patient bedside at that time. They didn’t exist).
It felt like it was a stretch that an out of wedlock baby would have been ok with either the people in that community or with a high society mother.
Small things.
It was a good read, and I liked that it addressed how some of the scientists felt after the bomb.