Dancing With Einstein: A Novel

Growing up during Cold War fears about atomic war, Marea Hoffman, the daughter of a Manhattan Project scientist, seeks comfort with grandfatherly friend Albert Einstein and struggles with unanswered questions when her father mysteriously dies in a car accident. By the author of Setting Fires. 15,000 first printing.

"Kirkus Reviews"

Fascinating...Wenner manages in a short space to create memorable characters [including] Einstein himself, whom Marea called Grandpa and used to dance with around the living room to oompah music. The fallout of America's atomic nightmare is a touching, humanistic story.

Pat Conroy"Dancing With Einstein" is one of those astonishing novels that has it all: intelligence, humor, eroticism, and a strong emotional power.

"Kirkus Reviews"Fascinating...Wenner manages in a short space to create memorable characters [including] Einstein himself, whom Marea called Grandpa and used to dance with around the living room to oompah music. The fallout of America's atomic nightmare is a touching, humanistic story.

Donna Seaman"Book List" (Starred Review)The narrator of Wenner's achingly beautiful new novel is named Marea, after the dark seas of the moon, and it is clear that she is not like most people. About to turn 30 and a touch mystical, she has been wandering the world alone for seven years in the clutch of a cosmic depression stemming from her unusual childhood. Her Holocaust survivor father was a nuclear physicist involved in the Manhattan Project. Albert Einstein was a family friend. Marea suffered from horrific nightmares about atomic war, and her pacifist mother and Einstein both objected to Marea's father's work on the hydrogen bomb, a conflict that remained painfully unresolved when he died in a car crash. Marea is now in New York, trying to stay anchored and make sense of her life by seeing four radically different therapists, a loaded situation Wenner handles with great wit and purpose. Finally, Marea's mother hands over her father's diary, thus allowing Wenner's haunted, empathic, and intriguing protagonist to come to terms with her personal legacy while Wenner brilliantly parses the terrible ethos of the atomic bomb and celebrates the power of stories, the lifeblood of the talking cure.

"Kirkus Reviews" Fascinating...Wenner manages in a short space to create memorable characters [including] Einstein himself, whom Marea called Grandpa and used to dance with around the living room to oompah music. The fallout of America's atomic nightmare is a touching, humanistic story.

Pat Conroy "Dancing With Einstein" is one of those astonishing novels that has it all: intelligence, humor, eroticism, and a strong emotional power.

Donna Seaman "Book List" (Starred Review) The narrator of Wenner's achingly beautiful new novel is named Marea, after the dark seas of the moon, and it is clear that she is not like most people. About to turn 30 and a touch mystical, she has been wandering the world alone for seven years in the clutch of a cosmic depression stemming from her unusual childhood. Her Holocaust survivor father was a nuclear physicist involved in the Manhattan Project. Albert Einstein was a family friend. Marea suffered from horrific nightmares about atomic war, and her pacifist mother and Einstein both objected to Marea's father's work on the hydrogen bomb, a conflict that remained painfully unresolved when he died in a car crash. Marea is now in New York, trying to stay anchored and make sense of her life by seeing four radically different therapists, a loaded situation Wenner handles with great wit and purpose. Finally, Marea's mother hands over her father's diary, thus allowing Wenner's haunted, empathic, and intriguing protagonist to come to terms with her personal legacy while Wenner brilliantly parses the terrible ethos of the atomic bomb and celebrates the power of stories, the lifeblood of the talking cure.