Bestselling Author Rachel Barenbaum discusses, Atomic Anna, in a virtual JBC Author Talk

Monday, August 29 at 3:00 P.M.

Pupblic access on Zoom (where you can participate in the Q & A) or on FCTV Channel 13 (live streaming or on the website) FCTV: http://www.fctv.org/v3/13live

Register here for Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAtdu2sqz4rGtwr6xvxU-chR_x5qq69BNpG

Barenbaum burnishes her reputation as an up-and-coming talent with this audacious time travel story... The threads build toward a deeply satisfying denouement, and the author uses the sci-fi plot device to explore parent-child relationships and questions about the morality of changing the past. Barenbaum dares greatly, and succeeds.- Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Rachel Barenbaum’s latest novel is about Chernobyl, yes, but also about comic books, the power of math, finding one’s truth, and love, both biological and found...The novel is masterfully plotted.”—New York Times Book Review


“Atomic Anna is a dazzling work of ingenuity and imagination.”―Téa Obreht, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Inland

From Pamela Rothstein:

You will be drawn in and charmed by this engaging and lively author as Rachel Barenbaum presents an illustrated talk about the ingeniously-plotted, and character-rich novel Atomic Anna, followed by conversation with Director of Lifelong Learning Pamela Rothstein and Q & A with you. With each chapter citing a teaching from Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) this is also a deeply Jewish book that asks big questions that are both contemporary and ancient. And, with events in Ukraine bringing urgency to issues of nuclear power and the safety of nuclear power plants in a wartime situation, the novel's axis around Chernobyl has fresh relevance.

About the book:

From the author of A Bend in the Stars, an epic adventure as three generations of women work together and travel through time to prevent the Chernobyl disaster and right the wrongs of their past.

Three brilliant women.
Two life-changing mistakes.
One chance to reset the future.

In 1986, renowned nuclear scientist, Anna Berkova, is sleeping in her bed in the Soviet Union when Chernobyl’s reactor melts down. It’s the exact moment she tears through time—and it’s an accident. When she opens her eyes, she’s landed in 1992 only to discover Molly, her estranged daughter, shot in the chest. Molly, with her dying breath, begs Anna to go back in time and stop the disaster, to save Molly’s daughter Raisa, and put their family’s future on a better path.

If you have an interest in any of the topics below (among others), you will find a path into this engaging book (PR):

- the immigrant experience in America
- intergenerational relations and trauma
- Russia & the Soviet Union
- nuclear war and weapons
- great storytelling

- fiction about women
- fiction by women
- time travel ("light")
- women in comics
- comics

About the author:
Rachel Barenbaum's bestselling, debut novel, A Bend In The Stars, was named a New York Times Summer Reading Selection and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. Rachel is a prolific writer and reviewer for the Los Angeles Review of Books and DeadDarlings. She is a graduate of GrubStreet's "Novel Incubator." In a former life she was a hedge fund manager and a spin instructor. She has degrees from Harvard in Business, and Literature and Philosophy.