-- Half Life explores loves lost and destinies unfulfilled'and probes issues of loyalty and identity, gender and class, motherhood and sisterhood, fame and anonymity, scholarship and knowledge. Through parallel contrasting versions of Marya's life, Jillian Cantor's unique historical novel asks what would have happened if a great scientific mind was denied opportunity and access to education. It examines how the lives of one remarkable woman and the people she loved ' as well as the world at large and course of science and history'might have been irrevocably changed in ways both great and small.