An elixir to alter the fate of the world

Lars and his teenage friends could never have imagined how their little Norwegian valley would come to play a pivotal role in the new science that would determine the outcome of the world’s greatest conflict. The sedate town of Rjukan in the narrow and picturesque Vestfjord Valley was a fine place to come of age, as was all of Norway, a peaceful nation trying to maintain nonalignment in a world of increasing turmoil and conflict. After the winds of war had shredded Norway’s neutrality, the country became a backwater of German occupation in the titanic armed struggle of World War Two. But in that picturesque valley lurked a special water, accumulating drop by precious drop. Once the Germans gained control of it, accumulating sufficient quantity to enable uranium fission was all that stood between Hitler’s scientists and a nuclear reactor leading to an atomic bomb. All, that is, except for the Norwegian underground and a brave band of resourceful resistance commandos dedicated to thwarting the atom-splitting ambitions of the Nazi war machine. Special Water is the saga of a substance critical to creation of a nuclear weapon–how it was made and how it very nearly changed the outcome of the war and the course of human history.

Six years of in-depth research by G. Mason gave birth to Special Water, a story spanning ten of the most consequential and devastating years in human history. Though written as historical fiction, the author hewed closely to historical fact in crafting the story of how an obscure Nordic mountain valley became a focal point in the race to harness the atom.