Lauren Belfer's new novel, A Fierce Radiance, takes place in New York during WWII, with all the fears and uncertancies of that era. There are interweaving plots,a murder,a love affair, and death. The main storyline, however, is the development of penicillin. Before antibiotics, you could die of a scratch,an infection, the flu, or meningitis. Penicillin changed life as the people then knew it. Big drug companies were competing to see who could develop the technology to produce the drug because of the huge profits involved. The government was trying to control production to be able to use penicillin for it's armed forces. Although this sounds grim, the novel is a complex, interesting read.
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