'Saint Joan of New York,' a Novel by Mark Alpert ’84 is Now Available from Springer
Saint Joan of New York, by Writing alumnus Mark Alpert ’84, follows a math prodigy who becomes obsessed with discovering the Theory of Everything. Joan Cooper, a 17-year-old genius traumatized by the death of her older sister, tries to rebuild her shattered world by studying string theory and the efforts to unify the laws of physics. But as she tackles the complex equations, she falls prey to disturbing visions of a divine being who wants to help her unveil the universe’s mathematical design. Joan must enter the battle between science and religion, fighting for her sanity and a new understanding of the cosmos.
In an essay for Kill Zone, Alpert said of his writing the book, “For me, the primary mystery is Joan herself: what was going on inside her head? Was God really issuing instructions to her in the voices of Saints Catherine and Margaret? Or did she herself come up with the idea of driving the English out of France and then convince herself that the command had come from the Almighty? Was she perhaps a remarkably high-functioning schizophrenic?”
After researching Joan of Arc for far longer than planned, Alpert went on to write, “I realized that I couldn’t write a historical novel about her. If I wanted to make Joan come alive, I had to reimagine her as a modern-day teenager with contemporary beliefs. What’s more, I had to connect Joan’s story with my own passions and obsessions.”
Of the book Alpert wrote on his website, “If Joan does still exist somewhere—who knows?—I hope I haven’t let her down. As I worked on my novel, I sometimes imagined her looking over my shoulder and scowling at all the heretical things I was writing. But I also imagined that she would be patient with me. Surely, someone who was put to death for her intransigence, her brave refusal to back down from her idiosyncratic beliefs, would forgive a writer for envisioning a metaphysics that’s a bit different from the usual depictions. That’s my hope at least.”
Mark Alpert majored in astrophysics at Princeton University. His thesis resulted in the paper, General Relativity in a (2 + 1)-Dimensional Spacetime, which was published in the Journal of General Relativity and Gravitation in 1984 and has been cited in more than 100 physics papers since then. He received his MFA in writing at Columbia University, and went on to write for Fortune Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Claremont (N.H.) Eagle Times, and the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser.
Alpert is a former editor at Scientific American and an internationally bestselling author of science-fiction thrillers, including Final Theory, The Omega Theory, Extinction, The Furies, and The Orion Plan. His first novel, Final Theory (Simon & Schuster, 2008), was published in 24 languages, condensed in Reader’s Digest, and optioned for film. He specializes in writing thrillers that explain scientific advances such as gene editing, brain-computer interfaces, self-replicating machines, and cyborg insects. He lives in New York with his wife and two kids.