23 Historical Fiction Books About Women in STEM

Book Summary

In 1808, Rose loves working with her naturalist father on his groundbreaking study of the platypus. When he is unable to travel to present his findings to the Royal Society in England, Rose goes in his place. What she discovers will change generations.

In 1908, Tamsin travels to the Hunter Valley to pick up an old sketchbook, which was donated to the public library. When she arrives, she discovers that there is more to the sketchbook than she expected. Shaw, a young bookseller and lawyer, has his own ideas about the book, and Tasmin partners with him to try and uncover the book’s true provenance.

Book Summary

Civil is fresh out of nursing school and has dreams of making a big difference in her post-segregation African American community. She works for the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, and she’s sent to a rural cabin during her first week on the job. When she arrives, Civil is shocked to find that her patients are children, only 11 and 13 years old.

The girls, Erica and India, are innocent and not even thinking of boys. However, because they are poor and Black, those handling their benefits have requested the children be on birth control. Civil struggles with this unexpected aspect of her new career. Despite the shocking reason for meeting the sisters, Civil is endeared to them and their family. However, one day when she arrives for her visit, something unthinkable has happened, and Civil soon finds herself involved in a legal case.

You’ll also see Civil years later, at the end of her career, with a daughter of her own, as she tries to find peace without forgetting those she encountered along the way.

Book Summary

Rosalind Franklin was a brilliant scientist who always felt more comfortable with the consistent laws of chemistry and physics than with people. Her colleagues complain about her and avoid working alongside her.

When she is assigned to work on DNA, Rosalind believes she can finally be the one to figure out the building blocks of life. And then it finally happens. She discovers the double helix structure of DNA, but she could have never predicted what would happen next.

Book Summary

Miri, a doctor, and her brother Vanya, a physicist were raised by their babushka, a famous matchmaker who has taught the siblings to protect themselves at all costs. It’s the summer of 1914 and war with Germany is looming. As Miri and Vanya race against Einstein to solve one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, they are also trying to escape the anti-Semitism and violence overtaking their country.

When Vanya and Miri’s fiancé both go missing, Miri braves the firing squad to go looking for them. With an eclipse darkening the skies, the safety of Miri’s family and the future of science hangs in the balance.

Book Summary

In 1822, all of Edinburgh was focused on upcoming interrelated events. First, the old Botanical Garden was moving to a new home on the slopes below Inverleith House. It’s quite a spectacle with full-grown trees being transported on horse-drawn carts. The opening of the new Royal Botanic Garden coincides with the rumored upcoming visit of King George IV. Additionally, the Agave Americana plant looks set to flower – an event that only occurs once in several decades.

In the midst of the excitement, an unlikely friendship forms. Newly widowed Elizabeth arrives from London to live with her late husband’s aunt Clementina. Her grand home borders the new Botanic Garden, and Elizabeth volunteers as an artist to document the impending bloom of the Agave Americana. At the garden, Elizabeth meets Belle, who has a passion for botany and the lucrative, dark art of perfume creation. But Belle isn’t telling the truth about her true identity.

Book Summary

Emily was determined to make changes in the world and was an active participant in the women’s suffrage movement. But when her husband, Washington Roebling, was injured on the job as the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, Emily put her own work on hold to take over for her husband. As the bridge rises, Emily wonders if she’s building her own legacy or that of her husband.

This novel is based on the true story of how Emily Roebling transformed this project of monumental scale. Her work took her into the bowels of the East River, to suffragette riots, and into the halls of Manhattan’s elite.

Book Summary

Elizabeth Zott is a quirky and brilliant female chemist working with an all-male team at the Hastings Research Institute. But her scientific qualifications don’t stop the “good old boys” from being frustrated that she won’t get coffee or make copies for them. When Elizabeth meets Calvin Evans, another scientist at the Institute, another type of chemistry results.

Fast forward a few years. It’s 1961, and Elizabeth is a 30-year-old single mother and her career has been detoured. Instead of working for Hastings, she’s now (somewhat reluctantly) the star of a much-loved cooking show called Supper at Six. Her cooking methods are unusual (“combine one tablespoon of acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”). As her popularity grows, it turns out she’s not just teaching women to cook, she’s also daring them to change the status quo.

Book Summary

Meridian is smart and ambitious, which isn’t the expectation of young women in her time. She’s obsessed with birds and is pursuing her PhD to become an ornithologist. However, her brilliant physics professor, Allen, becomes quite a distraction from her plans when they fall in love.

When Allen is recruited to Los Alamos for a secret wartime project, Meridian reluctantly gives up her goals to join him. Before long, she’s unwillingly taken on the role of traditional housewife. Years later, Meridian meets a Vietnam Vet who opens her eyes to how much she has given up. But is it too late to pursue her dreams now?

Book Summary

Frances “Frankie” McGrath is a 21-year-old nursing student who has been raised by her conservative parents to always do “the right thing.” But when her brother ships out for Vietnam in 1965, she begins to change her views of right and wrong. Frankie impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps to follow her brother to Vietnam. As she tends to the green and inexperienced young men who have been sent to fight the war, she is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction. Returning home to a changed America doesn’t prove to be any easier.

While The Women is the story of Frankie going to war, it also shines a light on the story of all women who risk everything to help others.

Book Summary

This fascinating historical fiction takes a look at Marie Curie’s real path in life alongside an alternate timeline that explores how science could have changed for all of us if she made one different choice.

In 1891, Marie was engaged to a promising mathematician, but his mother insisted that Marie was too poor for him to wed. After he broke her heart, Marie left Poland to attend the Sorbonne to study chemistry and physics. She eventually went on to be the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

But what if she had stayed in Russian Poland where education for women was restricted, instead of studying science in Paris and meeting Pierre Curie? Through the parallel stories, we see what could have happened if a great scientific mind was denied opportunity and access to education.

Book Summary

Judy Morgan is a shy student studying physics at Cambridge when she becomes friends with the beautiful and brilliant Hedy Lamarr, a Jewish woman who has fled the Nazis. Hedy is an inventor, and Judy believes the duo can use their knowledge to help keep loved ones safe. Soon, the fate of the world is in their hands.

Book Summary

When Nora’s parents die during a pandemic, she’s left in the care of eccentric surgeon Dr. Horace Croft. Most of the girls in her time spend days learning needlepoint or watercolors, but Nora is learning about suturing and anatomical illustrations. This is risky because, at the time, it was forbidden for women to practice medicine.

When a new surgical resident, Dr. Daniel Gibson, arrives, he has no idea that Nora is actually a better surgeon than he is. To protect herself and Dr. Croft, Nora must pretend to be a proper lady instead of a talented doctor. However, it becomes harder to stay quiet when patients are at risk. Then, she makes a discovery that could change the field forever. Can she take credit, or must she let the men in her life take credit for her genius?

Book Summary

This dual-timeline novel opens in 2019 at the funeral for BettyKay in a small town in Iowa. BettyKay’s daughters are shocked when Hollywood movie star Kitty Devereaux walks in and places something into their mother’s casket. Over the course of the weekend, BettyKay’s daughters discover a whole other side to their mother as Kitty shares stories of their lifelong friendship, which all began in 1967 at a St. Luke’s Nursing School in the fictional town of Greensboro, Iowa. 

BettyKay grew up on a farm in the Midwest and risked everything to attend nursing school against her parents’ wishes. Her assigned roommate, Kitty, came to Iowa to escape her past in Atlanta but already had her sights set on Hollywood. The two, having little in common, became unlikely friends. Another new student, Jenny, completed their trio. Jenny had aspirations of becoming a doctor, but she knew that the combination of being a woman and being Black meant that the odds were stacked against her in the late 60s. 

The bond these three women formed at their Iowa nursing school would carry them through the years as their lives led them in different directions – from the jungles of Vietnam to the movie sets of Hollywood.

Book Summary

Groundbreaking physicist Dr. Hannah Weiss is on the verge of splitting the atom for the first time in 1938 Berlin. However, she’s also a Jewish woman living under the Third Reich. She knows that the energy created by her discovery has the power to change the world – for the good through energy creation or for the bad through mass destruction. While her research is originally belittled, it’s eventually stolen by German colleagues.

Seven years later, in New Mexico, Major Jack Delaney arrives in town to catch a spy. Someone at Los Alamos has been leaking secrets to Hilter’s scientists. Jack’s top suspect is Hannah, an exiled physicist working on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s mission.

Book Summary

Kate falls in love with science in 1920, after convincing her mother to send her to college. When she’s rebuffed by the girl of her dreams, she finds solace in biology. She’s most interested in the new field of genetics and hopes to explain why people become who they are.

However, as a woman in an emerging scientific field, she faces discrimination, competition, and scientific theft. Will Kate have what it takes and be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to succeed in genetics?

Book Summary

This novel opens in 1930s Austria, where Hedwig Kiesler’s beauty saves her from the rising Nazi party and leads her to marry an Austrian arms dealer. Always underestimated, she overhears the Third Reich’s plans and understands more than anyone would have guessed.

After devising a plan to flee her husband’s castle in disguise, she escapes. The book then jumps forward to her arrival in Hollywood, where she changes her name to Hedy Lamarr, signs with MGM, and becomes a major film star of the 1940s. 

Beyond being a bombshell, Hedy was also a scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionized modern communication.

Book Summary

In 1918, Ireland was ravaged by both war and disease. Julia is a nurse working in an understaffed hospital caring for pregnant women who have been quarantined after contracting a terrible new flu that would come to be known as the Spanish Flu.

Two newcomers to the hospital ward will change everything over the course of three days. One is Doctor Katleen Lynn, who is rumored to be a Rebel on the run from the police. The other is Bridie, a young volunteer.

Book Summary

In the 1940s, polio became a feared pandemic across the world. The disease was cruel – killing or paralyzing those contracting it, with children particularly impacted. This historical fiction tells the story of a real scientist, Dorothy Horstmann, who worked desperately for a cure.

While many male scientists raced to beat each other to a polio vaccine so they could achieve notoriety, Dorothy’s eye remained on the goal of saving lives. Her name was commonly left off of the scientific discoveries she made in favor of her male co-workers, but she still forged diligently ahead.

Book Summary

Hedy Kiesler first rose to prominence as an Austrian Jewish actress known for her scandalous nude role in the film Ecstasy. Her husband is known for something more sinister – supplying Hilter’s regime with weapons.

When she’s able to flee her husband’s tight control, she lands in Hollywood and is rebranded as Hedy Lamarr. While she has personal success, her private life continues to be difficult. However, she has a secret. External beauty aside, Hedy is a brilliant inventor, and she’s come up with a new technology that will change not only war defense, but the way the world communicates.

Book Summary

This historical fiction novel is based on the little-known story of America’s first nursing school. While nurses had historically been viewed as unskilled, New York’s Bellevue Hospital training school for nurses is the first of its kind. It’s formed around Florence Nightingale’s nursing principles of discipline, intellect, and moral character. Only young women of good breeding are accepted in Bellevue’s nurse training program.

Una is a young female grifter who evades the police by conning her way into the nurse training program. She struggles to fit in with her prim classmates and balks at the doctors’ endless commands. On the other hand, life on the streets prepared her for the horrors of injury and disease, allowing her to slowly find her footing in the program. When Una becomes suspicious about a patient’s death, she risks exposing the truth about her background.

Book Summary

It was not easy to be a female scientist in 1914. Violet Schuyler Grant endures her much older, philandering husband because he makes her role as a physicist in prewar Germany possible. When Lionel, a captain in the British Army, meets Violet, he encourages her to escape her husband’s hold. However, with WW1 on the horizon, Lionel’s motives are suspect.

Fifty years later, Vivian Schuyler is a recent Bryn Mawr graduate in New York City but is not content to be a socialite. Instead, she’s trying to break into the glamorous world of magazine publishing. She uses her investigative skills when she receives a package of information about a mysterious aunt she never knew.

Book Summary

This historical novel is based on the real-life and memoir of a 15th-century female physician in China. Tan Yunxian was raised in the Ming Dynasty era by her grandmother, also a physician, who taught her the art of Chinese medicine. Additionally, she learned about female conditions from her best friend, Meiling, who was training to be a midwife. While Yunxian was on the path to be a success in her own right, she was still sent into an arranged marriage.

Her new mother-in-law was a traditionalist who forbade her from seeing Meiling and stopped her from helping the girls and women in their household. Instead, she is supposed to be a “proper wife,” learning poetry, embroidering foot-binding slippers, and staying within the walls of their compound.

How did Yunxian break free and go on to treat women from all classes of society and create remedies that are still used over 500 years later? Lisa See tells her compelling life story in this novel.

Book Summary

Spanning much of the 18th & 19th centuries, this book tells the story of the fictional Whittaker family. The patriarch, Henry, begins life as a poor Englishman before making his fortune in South America. He rises to be the wealthiest man in Philadelphia.

His daughter, Alma, gets his money and his great mind. She becomes a botanist who studies the mysteries of evolution while falling in love with a man obsessed with the spiritual realm. She also becomes fixated on human sexuality at points after finding graphic books while reviewing acquisitions for her father’s library.