Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has proved to be a uniquely powerful and versatile spectroscopy, and no modern university chemistry department or industrial chemistry laboratory is complete without a suite of NMR spectrometers. The phenomenon of nuclear spin may seem an odd basis for an analytical tool, but it is the relative isolation of the nuclear spin from its surroundings that makes it an ideal noninterfering probe of the electronic environment....

Thirteen-year-old Nyle learns about relationships and death when fifteen-year-old Ezra, who was exposed to radiation leaked from a nearby nuclear plant, comes to stay at her grandmother's Vermont farmhouse.