Setting 1964 – Southern California  

Elizabeth Zott, age about 21 or 22,  is set up to get a PhD in Chemistry when her advising professor makes a pass and she completely rebuffs him. So, with admission denied, .she gets a job at a research facility. Sad to say it would seem all the bosses and most of the employers are male and sexist.

Lessons in Chemistry 
By Bonnie Grams
2023 / 
Read by Miranda Raison, 11h 55m
Rating – 8.75 rom-com of the 1960s 

Setting 1964 – Southern California  

But there is one male there, a boss no less. who finds Elizabeth’s intelligence fascinating and their relationship pro-gresses until he carries a ring around with him. At this point I was expecting a romance although there was nothing like that in the blurbs,  The couple eventually moves in together sharing a dog named Six-Thirty, the time they found him.

In spite of barriers Elizabeth and Calvin (a very young Nobel prize winner) get together and fall deeply in love. Wonderful, but this is only about 10% of the book! (No spoilers here!)  Sad do say Calvin is suddenly killed in a traffic accident and only a few days later Elizabeth realizes she’s pregnant. Against all better judgement of the 1960s, she keeps her darling daughter, named Madeline, who turns out to is precocious – precocious to the point of being difficult. But Elizabeth gets a job back at the lab where she and Calvin had worked and the neighbor lady, having problems with her own husband, agrees to babysit.  

Even after all that, there are men around for the now single Mom to be associated with so this reader kept thinking so&so is going to be “the romance” for Elizabeth.    I was delighted when each and every one of them is a jerk.