"The Atomic Weight of Love" by Elizabeth J. Church

Still in her early 20s, Meridian Wallace, a Western Pennsylvania girl about to make a name for herself at the University of Chicago, becomes enthralled with Alden, a professor of physics, and twenty years her senior. She marries him just as he is dispatched to an unheard-of hamlet in New Mexico, to lend his expertise to the development of a revolutionary and terrifying new weapon. In spite of her acceptance to Cornell grad school, he moves her summarily to Los Alamos and crushes her scientific potential and hopes.

And such is Meridian’s treatment at her husband’s hands. This treatment, and Meridian’s sporadic rebellious impulses against it, power this narrative. It’s a treatment that is alive and flourishing to this day, unfortunately, but I hope it isn’t still the expected thing in American marriages that it was in the middle of the last century.  The assumptions made by American society in the 1940s were shared by young people getting married. In the novel, The Atomic Weight of Love, these assumptions are portrayed accurately.

In fact, accuracy is one great virtue of this book. Meridian, whom Alden calls Meri, allows her husband to make unilateral decisions for her, decisions regarding the taking of her virginity, and where she will and will not study, where they will live as he works, he even makes judgments about her friends. Throughout, he exercises his autocracy with a snob’s dismissive ease, assured in the superiority of his perspective. From time to time Meri chafes under his rule, and carves out a life for herself, following her passion for ornithology to make a talented amateur’s study of a population of crows.

Then along comes Viet Nam and upheaval in American society. Meri’s love for Clay, a beautiful young man, engenders her much-needed awakening; her rebirth reminds Meri of her own worth and capacity for love. This leads to her final triumph of self-respect, as it were, as we observe her good works over the years.

Author Elizabeth J. Church provides a vivid character and puts her to a number of good uses. First, she illustrates a culture in America which subjugated wives and women in general to the will of husbands and men. Second, she brings to life a turbulent time in the height of the Viet Nam war, refracted through the prism of her heroine’s life. She uses this highly apt backdrop to portray an intelligent, sympathetic protagonist’s growth and adaptation. All this is done so honestly and deeply: Alden’s moments of oafishness are balanced against his well-meaning moments; Clay’s impatience shows a youthfulness yet to be tempered by much experience; even the secondary characters are fully nuanced. This is a sensitive, affecting story, easy to believe and appreciate. I was very happy to make Meridian’s acquaintance.