Excerpt from Atomic Anna by Rachel Barenbaum, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She heard a moan. "Anna?"

Anna jumped back, stabbed the knife into the air in a wild gesture. She scanned the room, searched for a threat, for someone, tried to think who could do this. "Anna," a woman's voice said again, and Anna saw her, a stranger lying in a puddle of blood next to a picture window that looked out over the ice-covered mountains. She appeared to have been shot in the chest, to be bleeding out. Anna dropped to her knees at the woman's side and tried to apply pressure with blood-soaked towels already next to her. It was all she knew to do.

"What happened? Is anyone else here?" Anna asked, frantic. She looked at the woman's face, tried to place it, but she didn't recognize her. "How did you know my name?" Blood gushed from the woman's chest, spilled over Anna's hands as she pressed harder to try to stop it. Her panic rose. Surely whoever did this would hunt Anna next.

"Why are we here?" Anna asked, and then saw two pendants around the stranger's neck, golden bears. One bear was on its haunches, ready to fight. The other was on all fours, resting, at peace. She looked down at her own matching necklace dangling between them. Anna's mother had given Anna the bears just before she was taken. They were unique, a wedding present to her own mother, and Anna had never seen those pendants anywhere else. "Where did you get that necklace?" Anna asked. "Who are you?"

"You gave it to me. Or you will." The woman's voice was a rasp. "Anna, we failed."

"What are you talking about? What's happening?"

"I'm Manya. Your daughter."

Anna's elbows buckled, her hands slipped, and she had to remind herself to keep pressure on the wound. Anna hadn't seen her daughter since she was a baby. This had to be a cruel trick. Anna had spent years staring at any girl or woman who was the right age, sure that if they happened across each other, she would recognize her daughter. But this woman didn't resemble who she imagined her Manya to be. Anna forced herself to look closer. She tried to find a trace of Yasha or of her own self in her features, her voice, but fear and panic made it impossible to see. "Manya?" A surge of sadness paralyzed Anna as she realized the irony of what might be unfolding, the idea that she might only see her daughter on the two ends of her life, as a baby and a corpse. Tears drenched her cheeks, fell on the woman and mixed with all that blood. "Are you really Manya?"

"You gave me the bears, said you would trust me if you saw them." The woman's voice was softer now. She didn't have much time. "You said if I told you about the cake, your tenth birthday, you would know me." A queasy sensation hit Anna when she heard the word cake. The woman was fading, paler even than she had been a minute earlier. "We're running out of time. This is your first jump. Your amplifier, it pulled you through a ripple in space-time. It's December 8, 1992." The woman's eyes fluttered. Anna shook her to keep her awake.

"Time travel? I actually did it?" Anna whispered. "This is 1992?"

"Yes, but we failed." The woman gasped for air. "This is your station. The one you designed. Yasha built it. For you."

It was beginning to make sense now, why it felt familiar.

"We failed. Again," the woman whispered. "You have to try again. For Raisa. You promised to save Raisa."

"Who is Raisa?"

"Your granddaughter."

Anna shook her head. It was too much to take in and she was trying to parse facts from the emotions roiling through her, the fear and regret, sadness and confusion, making it hard to think clearly. The woman— her daughter, Manya, maybe—grabbed Anna's hand. It was warm and slick, covered in blood.

"Chernobyl melted down. Reactor Number Four." The woman's voice was even weaker.

"It couldn't melt down. I designed it. Oversaw the safety protocols myself," Anna said.

"The impossible is always possible." A ghost of a smile crossed the woman's face. "You told me that." And then, "The reaction caused the jump. We're out of time." She gasped. "Save Raisa. Remember you promised." The woman struggled to hand Anna a worn photograph just as everything around Anna turned into static, as if she were watching television and the antenna needed to be adjusted. She was sucked into a place with no light at all. Her legs and arms lengthened and stretched. She was sure she was dying and she screamed because she couldn't leave, not yet, only the sound was lost in the dark.

Excerpted from Atomic Anna by Rachel Barenbaum. Copyright © 2022 by Rachel Barenbaum. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.