Lost and Wanted

From the publisher: "Helen Clapp's breakthrough work on five-dimensional space-time landed her a tenured professorship at MIT; her popular books explain physics in plain terms. Helen disdains notions of the supernatural in favor of rational thought and proven ideas. So it's perhaps especially vexing for her when, on an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday in June, she gets a phone call from a friend who has just died. The two women had once confided in each other about everything - in college, the unwanted advances Charlie received from a star literature professor; after graduation, Helen's struggles as a young woman in science, Charlie's as a black screenwriter in Hollywood, their shared challenges as parents. As Helen is drawn back into Charlie's orbit she is forced to question the laws of the universe that had always steadied her mind and heart."