The Wanderers

Starred review from January 23, 2017
Three astronauts and those who know them best explore the limits of truth and love in Howrey’s (Blind Sight) genre-bending novel. Helen Kane, Sergei Kuznetsov, and Yoshihiro Tanaka are the perfect crew for the first mission to Mars: elite explorers and engineers, they’re more at home in microgravity than with their families. But even years of training can’t fully prepare them for Eidolon, a highly-engineered 17-month-long simulation. Beyond the physical and emotional stress for the crew members, their prolonged isolation will also test their families. The story’s multiple points of view don’t confuse the intensely introspective narrative; instead they create perspective and distance—three planetary bodies and their satellites observing themselves, and each other. The voices are distinct, each member reviewing and acting on his or her own emotional telemetry with equal parts brilliance and blunder, and the stakes are high, with any heartbeat capable of tipping the scales against the crew’s survival. But the longer the mission runs, the longer the three are kept in isolation, the more they question the stories they choose to tell their handlers, their families, each other, and themselves—and the more they question the stories they are being told. With these believably fragile and idealistic characters at the helm, Howrey’s insightful novel will take readers to a place where they too can “lift their heads and wonder.” Agent: Lisa Bankoff, ICM Partners.

Mozhan Marno narrates a story about training for an expedition to Mars with expert voicing of the many characters. Prime Space, a private company, has selected three astronauts to send to Mars. Before they can go, they must withstand a seventeen-month long simulation of the trip to test their psychological and physical well-being--all, paradoxically, in intense isolation but under constant observation. Marno transitions smoothly between the accents and distinct personalities of astronauts Helen, Sergei, and Yoshi, as well as their families and observers, who are going about their everyday lives on Earth. This moving audiobook is less about traveling in space than it is about the extremes to which humans can push themselves, the masks they use to obscure themselves from others, and the challenges of being the one left behind. E.E.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine