"Rakel has a rare talent for math, but she has never mastered the art of making friends. At nineteen, she moves to Oslo to attend university, and meets Jakob, a brilliant, older teacher. He is also working on a novel about Sofja Kovalevskaja, the first woman who became a professor in Mathematics. Just as Kovalevskaja was very close to her much older advisor, Rakel and Jakob are instantly drawn to each other and eventually become lovers, although he is already married. In the years to come, Rakel's academic career soars, but her health declines, and from her bedside she spends hours imagining the life of Sofja while trying to understand her own. With a gaze both naive and mercilessly sharp, she dissects what may be her life's only love story, looking for patterns and answers in numbers, music and literature. An extraordinarily beautiful, heartbreaking, and moving novel about finding meaning and connections when you need it the most." --

A picture book biography of "Sophie Kowalevski, [who] was both a brilliant mathematician and a talented writer. Creative work nurtured her mathematical research, giving her a flexibility of thought she treasured. A wonderful STEAM figure, she not only did mathematical research, but she also created many literary works"--Publisher marketing

Determined to free herself and her sister from oppressive conventions that complicate their quest for an education, nineteenth-century would-be mathematician Sofya arranges their marriages so that they can study abroad.