Rachel Pastan has written a compelling and compulsively readable tale about a complex woman’s path to success in biological science—showing us, through subtle social conflicts and in lucid evocative prose, the difficulties of entering any field as an unconventional, impassioned participant.
— Harold Varmus, Lewis Thomas University Professor, Weill Cornell Medicine; Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine
In 1923, having persuaded her resistant mother to send her to college, Kate Croft falls in love with science. Painfully rebuffed by a girl she longs for, and in flight from her own confusing sexuality, Kate finds refuge in the calm rationality of biology: its vision of a deeply interconnected world, and the promise that the new field of genetics can explain the way people are.
But science, too, turns out to be marred by human weakness. Despite her hard work and extraordinary gifts, Kate struggles, facing discrimination, competition, and scientific theft. At the same time, a love affair is threatened by Kate’s obsession with figuring out the meaning of the puzzling changes she sees in her experiments. The novel explores what it takes to triumph in the ruthless world of mid-20th-century genetics, following Kate as she decides what she is—and is not—willing to sacrifice to succeed.
Winner of the National Book Foundation’s inaugural 2022 Science + Literature awards
COMMITTEE’S CITATION:
In vivid, well-crafted prose, Rachel Pastan’s novel In the Field brings us into the professional and private life of a dedicated female geneticist, born in the 1920s, whose challenges and sacrifices illustrate how science, far from being impersonal, is practiced by people—how the pursuit of knowledge is shaped by the social norms and preconceptions that limit our behavior as individuals, and delay the acceptance of new ideas by the scientific community.
Reviews:
“Pastan makes a spirited character study...of...doggedness and triumph, and describes various complex scientific concepts with aplomb. This swift story educates as much as it excites.”
“Pastan succeeds in making the science compelling to the non-scientist and the science-averse.”
In the Field “offers a compelling journey through the frustrating, stymied, yet often fascinating world of scientific innovation. Kate is a satisfying character to root for—stubborn, tender, and occasionally myopic ... Pastan’s ability to display the distinctly human side of scientific discovery—its many pitfalls, thrills, and missteps—keeps the novel’s heart alive. Engaging and heartfelt.”
“Rachel Pastan engages in more conventionally structured speculation in IN THE FIELD … which is based on the life of Barbara McClintock, the American cytogeneticist who won the Nobel Prize in 1983. From childhood, McClintock’s alter ego, Kate Croft, experiences a tidal wave of struggles: with a mother who can’t see the point of sending her to college, with fellow students and colleagues who undermine her efforts, with a scientific establishment that belittles the achievements of women. She also struggles with her sexuality and with the realization that even after she and a female partner find happiness, their bond will be tested by the demands of her career.
Pastan’s portrayal of Kate is persuasively nerdy. Her dedication to the study of corn genetics is consuming: She thrills to a dinner conversation dominated by analyses of maize pigments and feels personally affronted when a friend switches his study subject from corn to flies. In one of her few heterosexual encounters, she finds herself comparing the poor man’s member to a corn cob. Constantly told she needs to get out into the world and press her case, Kate is way more comfortable in the lab. Small wonder that she broods after hearing an eminent professor’s formula for success in science — talent, luck and perseverance — ‘He hadn’t mentioned arrogance. Assurance. Ruthlessness. Pride.’”
“a thoroughly engrossing and timely adjacent-to-reality story about many things at once, both intimate and ‘public.’ I was most compelled by its reminder that the pursuit of scientific discovery challenges its actors with painful moral dilemmas, dramatic choices at every turn. Her Barbara McClintock stand-in travels a road littered with so many boulders that her ultimate ‘success’ is a cheering but complicated destination.”
— Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After and The Lake on Fire
