Luminous Bodies: A Novel of Marie Curie

364-page paperback / 5.5" x 8.5" / ISBN 9781589882102
Publication Date: 2/17/2026 (available for preorder) 

The name Marie Curie conjures images of X-ray cars, Nobel Prizes, and black-and-white photos of a scientist in her lab. But what of the daughter, wife, mother, friend, and lover?

Devon Jersild’s Luminous Bodies—the fruit of years of deep research—portrays the tumultuous life of Marie Curie. In the vein of the biographical novels Georgia (Dawn Tripp) and Matrix (Lauren Groff), the narrative follows Marie from girlhood in Poland to the battlefields of World War I, focusing on her marriage, widowhood, and love affair with fellow scientist Paul Langevin—after which she was ostracized from society and the scientific community. It captures the exhilaration of discovery and uncovers the lifesaving role of Hertha Ayrton, the scientist and suffragist who drew Curie back from the brink of suicide.

In the popular imagination, Curie was all brilliance and unshakeable drive. Luminous Bodies reveals the vulnerable woman behind the legend, haunted by self-doubt, depression, and breakdowns. How did she endure all this and society’s attacks, and still achieve so much? What sustained her rich emotional, sexual, and intellectual life—and what were the costs? Jersild explores these questions in this novel, as tender as it is compelling.

PRAISE FOR LUMINOUS BODIES:

"Devon Jersild’s beautiful novel is alchemic, bringing Marie Curie—the scientist, the lover, the mother, the immigrant, the Nobel Laureate—to life. This tense, moving, riveting story burns hot: it’s historical fiction at its very best."
—Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and Hour of the Witch

"In Luminous Bodies, Devon Jersild’s sweeping, psychologically penetrating fiction about Marie Curie, the intimate details of Curie’s life are so compelling, and so rooted in character, that the reader becomes Marie, the woman behind the famous name. I find myself thinking about this character, musing over certain moments in the novel, replaying dialogue and description in my head. It’s what I do to prolong a story that I don’t want to end, and that I want to place in other people’s hands."
—Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies

"Devon Jersild’s writing vibrates with a unique energy. Her Luminous Bodies shows us how life’s difficulties and contradictions can also light us with passionate possibilities."
—Ann Beattie, author of Onlookers and The New Yorker Stories

Devon Jersild is a writer and practicing clinical psychologist in Weybridge, Vermont. She won an O. Henry Award for a story that appeared in the Kenyon Review, and she has written for many other publications including New England Review, Times Literary Supplement, New York Times, USA Today, and Redbook. She has also been Associate Editor at New England Review and Associate Director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Luminous Bodies is her first novel.