The Sound of a Thousand Stars

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

Sure to captivate readers 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.

Rachel Robbins received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. She is a tenured assistant professor at Malcolm X College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago. A visual artist and author, her paintings have materialized on public transit, children’s daycare centers, and on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Most recently, her work has appeared in Rattle and The Kenyon Review. Rachel won Rhino Poetry’s Founder’s Prize and was nominated by Rhino Poetry for the Pushcart Prize in 2015. She was nominated by Make Literary Magazine for the Pushcart Prize in 2018. Rachel won the Illinois Arts Council Agency Literary Award in 2018. She is the author of In Lieu of Flowers, available through Tortoise Books, and Enola Spelled Backwards, forthcoming from Alcove Press. She lives in Chicago, with her husband, daughter, and her Portuguese Water Dog, Buddha.