Let It Destroy You Audiobook By Harriet Alida Lye cover art

Let It Destroy You

A Novel

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Let It Destroy You

By: Harriet Alida Lye
Narrated by: Harriet Alida Lye, Charlie Carrick
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About this listen

Winner, Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction
Vine National Canadian Jewish Book Awards (Fiction), Shortlist

Inspired by the true story of a dangerous atomic weapon and the man who designed it, here is a stunning novel of morality, creation, and loss from the acclaimed author of
The Honey Farm and Natural Killer.

It is August 12, 1945. Tomorrow, August Snow will be tried at the International War Crimes Court for patenting a more lethal variation on the atomic bomb. He invented a radiation machine to cure his young daughter’s cancer, despite knowing that the very same technology was capable of great destruction, and inevitably profited from disaster. But are his intentions relevant when the fate of the world is at stake?

August’s former wife, June, will also attend the hearing. Restless in her Hague hotel room the night before, she keeps watch over their daughter and reflects on the events that brought them here. She had nothing to do with making the bomb. But is she innocent? Wouldn’t any wife and mother have done the same thing in her shoes? And now, will it cost her everything?

Inspired by the physicist Leó Szilárd and the letters he wrote his wife, Gertrud "Trude" Weiss, Let It Destroy You is told in parallel narratives and ventures from Budapest to Berlin to Colorado, and back to Europe. It is a love story about two people whose destinies are bound by everything they share, and all that they’ve kept from one another. Above all, it is a testament to the logic-defying love of a parent who will stop at nothing to protect their child.

©2023 Harriet Alida Lye (P)2023 McClelland & Stewart
Biographical Fiction Fiction Literary Fiction World War II Scary Marriage

Critic reviews

Winner, Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction
Vine National Canadian Jewish Book Awards (Fiction), Shortlist

"Drawing on letters and other documents of the time, the author invites us into the marriage of August and June Snow, as they await August’s trial at the International War Crimes Court. August has been accused of patenting a more lethal variation of the atomic bomb. His reason for developing this terrifying technology is not for the destruction it could unleash but as a desperate attempt to save his child. This compelling novel speaks of power: of individual pride, of gender roles, of world-wide destruction. Both utterly intimate and terrifyingly vast, with gorgeous prose and luminescent intelligence, Harriet Alida Lye challenges the reader to ask the deeply ethical questions about the choices we make in life."—Jury Citation, Vine National Canadian Jewish Book Awards (Fiction)

“A dextrous hand at mood and pace, Toronto writer Lye . . . examines idealism and ambition, intent and outcome, and, with particular acuity, marriage and the complex, unpredictable ways its faltering can play out.” —Toronto Star

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