Two Jewish physicists fall in love while working on the mysterious Manhattan Project in this sweeping historical debut perfect for readers of Kate Quinn and Bonnie Garmus.
ENOLA SPELLED BACKWARDS
by Rachel Robbins
Crooked Lane, October 2024
Alice Kahn is a young Jewish physicist, one of the only female doctoral students in her class, studying with the famed Dr. Oppenheimer. An heiress, her 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 Fisher, 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, ENOLA SPELLED BACKWARDS 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. 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.
It’s 1968, and the Watry-Ridder family is feared and respected in equal measure. The local farmers seek out their water charms and the teenagers their love spells. The family’s charms and spells have long served the town, passed down through generations of witches descending from the Black Forest.
Shivering and bruised, a teen wakes up on the side of a dirt road with no memory of how she got there—or who she is. A passing officer takes her to the police station, and not long after, a frantic man arrives. He’s been searching for her for hours. He has her school ID, her birth certificate, and even family photos. 
Hwa Young was just ten years old when imperial forces destroyed her rebel moon home. Now, six years later, she is a citizen of the very empire that made her an orphan. Desperate to shake her rebel past, Hwa Young dreams of one day becoming a lancer pilot, an elite group of warriors who fly into battle using the empire’s most advanced tech—giant martial robots. Lancers are powerful, and Hwa Young would do anything to be the strong one for once in her life. When an attack on their boarding school leaves Hwa Young and her classmates stranded on an imperial space fleet, her dreams quickly become a reality. As it turns out, the fleet is in dire need of pilot candidates, and Hwa Young—along with her brainy best friend Geum, rival Bae, and class clown Seong Su—are quick to volunteer. But training is nothing like what they expected, and secrets—like the fate of the fleet’s previous lancer squad and hidden truths about the rebellion itself—are stacking up. And when Hwa Young uncovers a conspiracy that puts their entire world at risk, she’s forced to make a choice between her rebel past and an empire she’s no longer sure she can trust.