Brilliant Female Physicist Powers Impassioned Story of War, Romance and One of the World’s Most Earth-Shattering Discoveries
Los Angeles, CA, August 20, 2020 — When a groundbreaking female physicist uncovers the explosive potential of nuclear fission, sparks fly in more ways than one in Hannah’s War, the debut novel from award-winning director Jan Eliasberg. Based on the life and genius of Jewish-Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, Hannah’s War is Eliasberg’s compelling re-imagining of the race to build the atomic bomb.
Told with cinematic scope, unforgettable imagery, pitch-perfect dialogue and rich, complex characters, Hannah’s War offers nuanced answers to important questions about scientific discovery, patriotism, morality, love and loyalty. In giving voice to Dr. Meitner’s experiences, Eliasberg wanted to correct the historical record and to enable her own daughter and her peers to see that “history is filled with remarkable women of towering achievement and of deep humanism; we need only look beyond the authorized texts to see them. I wrote to shine a light on one of these women, and I hope Hannah’s War will be a beacon for all women.”
Hannah’s War opens in 1945 when Dr. Hannah Weiss, an Austrian-Jewish physicist, is removed from her essential work with the Critical Assemblies Team at the Los Alamos National Laboratories and is taken for interrogation. Major Jack Delaney, a rising star in the shadowy world of military intelligence, is convinced that someone in the Top-Secret Manhattan Project is a spy; the captivating, brilliant and mysterious female scientist soon becomes his primary suspect.
As World War II reaches its crescendo, the Allies and the Germans are racing to complete and test the atomic bomb — a weapon powerful enough to end WWII and, perhaps, all future wars. A weapon that, in the wrong hands, could destroy the world. As Jack questions Hannah about her involvement with the infamous Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin 10 years earlier, and her apparently friendly relationships with high-ranking members of the Nazi party, he slowly becomes seduced by her intelligence and quiet confidence. Is Hannah a Nazi spy, or is she protecting a far more personal and dark secret of her own? When Jack finally uncovers the truth about her life in Berlin before the war, Hannah must compromise her political allegiance, and choose between two lovers, and two versions of history.
A vivid, page-turning and inspiring re-imagination of the final months of World War II, and the brilliant researchers behind the first atomic bomb, Hannah's War is an unforgettable love story about an exceptional woman, and the dangerous power of her greatest discovery.
Author Jan Eliasberg’s prolific career includes writing and directing dramatic pilots for CBS, NBC, and ABC. She was hand-picked by Michael Mann as the first woman to direct Miami Vice and Wiseguy; as well as countless episodes of TV series, including Thirteen Reasons Why, Bull, Nashville, Parenthood, The Magicians, Blue Bloods, NCIS: Los Angeles, Supernatural, and numerous others. Her debut feature film Past Midnight, starred Paul Giamatti, the late Natasha Richardson, and the late Rutger Hauer. Throughout her tenure as a celebrated screenwriter, Eliasberg has written films driven by strong female leads, including Fly Girls about the Women Air Service Pilots in World War II for Nicole Kidman and Cameron Diaz.
Eliasberg received her B.A. from Wesleyan University, Magna Cum Laude, and holds
MFAs from the Yale School of Drama in Directing and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson in Fiction. A native New Yorker, Eliasberg currently lives in New York City.
Hannah’s War: A Novel
Back Bay Books
ISBN: 9780316537445