Kirkus-Style Review

The Only Woman in the Room
by Marie Benedict


A teenage Austrian actress charms a wealthy weapons manufacturer and secretly designs a device to undermine the Third Reich in World War II.

Readers who enjoy historical fiction about WWII, biographies, and the golden age of Hollywood, will find much to like about this book and the fascinating woman who inspired it. Benedict crafts a fictional biography about the glamorous Hollywood actress, Hedy Lamarr, that is fast-paced and suspenseful. By the age of nineteen, Hedy Kiesler had created a scandal by appearing nude in an art film, redeemed herself to achieve acclaim in the Austrian theatre world, and married an Austrian munitions magnate with ties to Nazi Germany in order to protect her family. And that was just the beginning. The story starts in 1933 Vienna just after Adolf Hitler has become Chancellor of Nazi Germany. In this first-person narrative, young Hedy Kiesler takes the reader into her confidence as she struggles to keep herself and her family safe from the Nazi menace.  Accustomed to men underestimating her intelligence, she consciously uses her beauty as a mask. “The only onus that you should carry on your delicate shoulders is that of your beauty,” her husband Fritz tells her. That mask protects her as she listens to her husband’s conversations with Hitler and Mussolini and learns of their horrifying plans for Europe’s future. Marriage to the mercurial Fritz Mandl sharpens her survival skills until she finally devises an escape plan that will carry her to London and then to Hollywood where she becomes Hedy Lamarr. Eager to find a way to fight the Nazis, Hedy calls on memories of her husband’s business discussions to invent a device to help the Allies. If only the U.S. Navy will accept her as an inventor and not just “the only woman in the room.”

An engrossing portrait of an enigmatic actress whose scientific contributions were overshadowed by her glamorous image.

Pub. Date: Jan. 8th, 2019 Page Count: 272 pp Review Posted Online: February 10, 2019

ISBN:  978-1492666868               Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark           Kirkus-Style Reviews Issue: March, 9, 2019