It is the summer of 1954 in Independence, Missouri, hometown of former President Harry Truman. Against the backdrop of a top-secret nuclear program that plunged the world into a fearful new age, a young woman has a secret of her own: an unwanted pregnancy that threatens to derail her life and the lives of those she loves.
Anne is an anomaly among women of her time. She is strong-willed, independent, and at odds with society’s unbending rules. As she leaves her baby behind in an unwed mother’s home, society, too, is leaving behind an antiquated scientific system.
Noah’s Quark is a multigenerational tale that brings together a rich cast of characters—lives different and yet surprisingly entangled—including Orville, Anne’s heartbroken father and the town baker; Jimmy, the meticulous train station janitor abandoned at birth and raised in an institution; Isa, a particle physicist searching for her own secret origins; and Harry Truman, the man who unleashed the power hidden inside Einstein’s famous equation and paved the way for a fuzzy new science known as quantum mechanics.