Synopses & Reviews
Station Eleven meets The Martian in this brilliantly inventive novel about three astronauts training for the first-ever mission to Mars, an experience that will push the boundary between real and unreal, test their relationships, and leave each of them and their families changed forever.
In an age of space exploration, we search to find ourselves.
In four years Prime Space will put the first humans on Mars. Helen Kane, Yoshi Tanaka, and Sergei Kuznetsov must prove they re the crew for the job by spending seventeen months in the most realistic simulation ever created.
Retired from NASA, Helen had not trained for irrelevance. It is nobody s fault that the best of her exists in space, but her daughter can't help placing blame. The MarsNOW mission is Helen s last chance to return to the only place she s ever truly felt at home. For Yoshi, it's an opportunity to prove himself worthy of the wife he has loved absolutely, if not quite rightly. Sergei is willing to spend seventeen months in a tin can if it means travelling to Mars. He will at least be tested past the point of exhaustion, and this is the example he will set for his sons.
As the days turn into months the line between what is real and unreal becomes blurred, and the astronauts learn that the complications of inner space are no less fraught than those of outer space. The Wanderers gets at the desire behind all exploration: the longing for discovery and the great search to understand the human heart.
Review
"Engrossing.... Although the contours of a space drama may seem familiar to a 21st-century readership, Howrey, through the poetry of her writing and the richness of her characters, makes it all seem new. A lyrical and subtle space opera." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"Howrey subtly explores the tensions between our inner and projected selves. Thanks to her wry sense of humor, it totally works.... [A]n often funny story that grows poignant in its final chapters." The Washington Post
Review
"Straddling the fine line between outer space and the world we know, The Wanderers is a breathtakingly honest and incredibly beautiful examination of the heart and soul of humankind. The further you progress into the astronaut limbo, the more difficult it becomes to parse through what’s real and what isn’t — and the more it becomes clear that this is a book that isn’t like anything you’ve ever read before." Newsweek
Review
"The Wanderers is phenomenal. A transcendent, cross-cultural and cross-planetary journey into the mysteries of space and self, the novel explores the dangers and necessities of venturing away from the familiar and finding home in the unknown. Howrey’s expansive vision left me awestruck." Ruth Ozeki, New York Times bestselling and Man Booker shortlisted author of A Tale for the Time Being
About the Author
Meg Howrey is a former dancer who performed with the Joffrey, Eglevsky Ballet, and City Ballet of Los Angeles. She toured nationally with the Broadway production of Contact, for which she won the Ovation Award in 2001 for best featured actress in a musical. Howrey is the author of two previous novels, Blind Sight and The Cranes Dance, and the coauthor of the bestselling novels City of Dark Magic and City of Lost Dreams, published under the pen name Magnus Flyte. Her nonfiction has appeared in Vogue and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She currently lives in Los Angeles.