From Publishers Weekly
Penicillin operates as the source of romance, murder, and melodrama in Belfer's (_City of Light_) evocative WWIIโera novel. When Life magazine sends strikingly beautiful photographer Claire Shipley to report on a promising new medication made from green mold, Claire, 36, the single mother of a young son, who lost her daughter to blood poisoning eight years before, is moved by the drug's potential to save lives. She also becomes smitten with resident doctor James Stanton, a man with two interests: penicillin and bedding Claire. But as the war casualties pile up, penicillin becomes an issue of national security and the politics of the drug's production threaten to disrupt the pair's lust-fueled romance, especially when James is sent abroad to oversee human trials of the drug. The pharmaceutical companiesโincluding one owned by Claire's fatherโrealize the financial potential in penicillin, which leads to a hodgepodge of soapy plot twists: suspicious deaths, amnesia, illness, exploitation, and espionage. Belfer handily exploits Claire's photo shoots to add historical texture to the book, and the well-researched scenes bring war-time New York City to life, capturing the anxiety-ridden period. (June)
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From
Starred Review Through the story of divorced 36-year-old Life photojournalist Claire Shiply, Belfer blends fact and fiction to describe the development of penicillin as a weapon of war in the 1940s. Seeing an early trial of the green-mold medicineโin which a dying man is miraculously cured of his infection, then dies when the medication runs outโShiply is drawn to the story because of the earlier death of her young daughter from septicemia. She is drawn, too, to head researcher Dr. James Stanton, who is soon tapped to be national scientific coordinator to provide penicillin to treat battlefield infections. While Stanton travels to war zones, Claire is asked by government officials to watch for pharmaceutical companies neglecting production of unpatented penicillin to develop โcousinโ antibacterials, even after her wealthy father has taken over one of the companies involved. Belfer (City of Light, 2003) combines life-and-death scenarios, romance, murder, and wartime reality at home and abroad, while satirizing industrialists who profit by dubious means and salve their consciences through philanthropy; and she warns that resistance to antibiotics could return us โto the era when otherwise healthy adults died from a scratch on the knee.โ An engrossing and ambitious novel that vividly portrays a critical time in American history. --Michele Leber