the City Colleges of Chicago. A visual artist and two-time Pushcart Prize–nominated writer, her paintings have materialized on public transit, children’s daycare centers, and Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. She lives in Chicago with her husband, children, and Portuguese Water Dog. Her new novel, The Sound of a Thousand Stars, is loosely based on her grandparents, who worked at Los Alamos but never spoke of their time there.
Robbins applied the Page 69 Test to The Sound of a Thousand Stars and reported the following:
From page 69:Learn more about The Sound of a Thousand Stars at the publisher's website.Physics was not an appropriate hobby for a wife. If he ever learned what she’d been up to as he was facing rifles, flame- throwers, and grenades in the trenches, he would certainly call the marriage off. Even long after this was over, someday when everything was declassified, he wouldn’t want a woman who could analyze wavelengths or calculate kinetic energy. By contrast, Caleb seemed to be memorizing her every word. He was not planning what he would say next while she spoke; he was truly listening to her. Perhaps he was even afraid to speak.I’ve always been intrigued by Marshall McLuhan and his theories about objects and media—so, it’s fascinating to see books as an extension of that. Yes, the Page 69 Test worked brilliantly with my book. This is a pivotal scene. It unfurls into the past through references to childhood, and simultaneously presupposes a shared future. There’s this sense of the transient nature of the whole town conveyed through the flimsy architecture and the two characters standing there on the deck, neither inside nor outside, waiting for the world to rearrange. They are longing for each other but unable to make contact, frozen outside of time. It’s the first moment of suspended time in the book, which is a major theme derived from my grandmother’s archival letters home during the war.
Pavlov was waiting for them on the porch, contentedly gnawing on a stick that he sandwiched between his paws. They climbed the rickety steps up to her small home, approaching the dim lantern swaying from the overhang. She turned to see Caleb’s face in the light, but he avoided her eyes, investigating her ramshackle windows and lopsided roofing. He knocked on the wooden siding, feigning a knowledge in carpentry. He ran his hand along the hinge of the screen and the jutting windowpane. “These houses look like they were drawn by someone trying to remember their childhood home,” he said. His expression cracked as he studied the humble siding. What childhood home was he trying to remember? “Blueprints made from nostalgia.”
“I’m not married,” she said, unprompted, catching her breath. “Yet.” She watched his features rearrange. Her chest fluttered, beating with hundreds of frantic wings. She tried to hold steady. “My fiancé is somewhere in the northeast of France. 38th Infantry Regiment.”
Caleb still had his hand on the windowpane, and he seemed afraid to move it, to break the spell of whatever was happening between them. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be. It’s easier for him to have a relationship with a pen and paper than a woman who talks back.”
“I never liked the phrase ‘talking back,’” he said carefully. “Maybe you were just talking forward.”
Alice felt something tighten in her chest at the suggestion that her words might mean something more. “I shouldn’t be so hard on him,” she said in a rehearsed voice. “He’s fighting to save us.” She tried to mean it.
Los Alamos had many nicknames, but my grandmother referred to it as Shangri-La, an homage to the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton. It’s a fitting reference since Hilton’s novel portrays a set of plane crash survivors who end up in the mountains of the Himalayas, far away, high up, and outside of time. Since Los Alamos was certainly isolated, first by its geography, and second due to necessary wartime security, I wanted my book to convey a sense of timelessness. This is why some chapters move in reverse while others explore the scientific underpinnings of the strange relationship between space and time, which to this day, we don’t fully understand.
--Marshal Zeringue
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