A big historical novel
Claire Shipley is a Life magazine photographer and single mother in post-Pearl Harbor New York City. She has a ten year old son but she's still grieving a daughter who died of septicemia at 3 years old.
Claire's new assignment is to document some of the first penicillin trials at the Rockefeller Institute. Penicillin had been discovered decades earlier but still could not be reliably produced in large quantities. At the Institute she meets James Stratton, the doctor who is conducting the tests and she is drawn into the surprisingly engrossing world of 1940's pharmaceutical research and the race to produce enough penicillin for every wounded soldier at a time when soldiers were more likely to die of infected wounds than in action.
A Fierce Radiance is the best kind of big historical novel, there's romance (between Claire and Dr. Stratton), there's suspense (Dr. Stratton's sister dies in mysterious circumstances), there are moral dilemmas (capitalists vs selfless researchers), there are cameo appearances by real historical figures (Claire's boss Henry Luce, for one) and there's a wonderful evocation of life in a nervous New York when the outcome of the war was not at all certain.
If you like this book, you'll also enjoy Lauren Belfer's first novel City of Light about Buffalo in 1901 (really, there's a lot more to Buffalo than you'd think). 
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