{"product_id":"9780062969880","title":"Half Life: A Novel","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eThe \u003cem\u003eUSA Today \u003c\/em\u003ebestselling author of \u003cem\u003eIn\u003cbr\u003eAnother Time \u003c\/em\u003ereimagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curie using a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one that mirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and for science if she’d made a different choice.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Poland in 1891, Marie Curie\u003cbr\u003e(then Marya Sklodowska) was engaged to a budding mathematician, Kazimierz\u003cbr\u003eZorawski. But when his mother insisted she was too poor and not good enough, he broke off the engagement. A heartbroken Marya left Poland for Paris, where she would attend the Sorbonne to study chemistry and physics. Eventually Marie\u003cbr\u003eCurie would go on to change the course of science forever and be the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.But what if she had made a different choice?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat if she had stayed in Poland,\u003cbr\u003emarried Kazimierz at the age of twenty—four, and never attended the Sorbonne or discovered radium? What if she had chosen a life of domesticity with a constant hunger for knowledge in Russian Poland where education for women was restricted,\u003cbr\u003einstead of studying science in Paris and meeting Pierre Curie?\u003cbr\u003eEntwining Marie Curie’s real story with Marya Zorawska’s fictional one, \u003cem\u003eHalf Life \u003c\/em\u003eexplores loves lost and destinies unfulfilled—and probes issues of loyalty and identity, gender and class, motherhood and sisterhood, fame and anonymity, scholarship and knowledge. Through parallel contrasting versions of Marya’s life, Jillian\u003cbr\u003eCantor’s unique historical novel asks what would have happened if a great scientific mind was denied opportunity and access to education. It examines how the lives of one remarkable woman and the people she loved – as well as the world at large and course of science and history—might have been irrevocably changed in ways both great and small.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HarperCollins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42369540128829,"sku":"9780062969880","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0603\/0838\/9949\/files\/9780062969880_p0.jpg?v=1771567068","url":"https:\/\/www.tatteredcover.mom\/products\/9780062969880","provider":"Tattered Cover","version":"1.0","type":"link"}