genre: historical fiction
Joan has known ever since she was a girl that her place was in the stars. After getting as much school as she possibly could and taking the best chance ever, she finally gets the opportunity to go to Houston's Johnson Space Center. If she works hard, she might get a chance to be among the stars herself, as an astronaut.
This is a novel that goes back and forth in time, from when Joan begins her journey at NASA and during a mission in December of 1984 where everything changes. And what we don't know is what happens between those two periods, who Joan meets and how seismic this shifts thing. It is strange that a story set during my childhood is "historical fiction," but there is no other way to categorize it. It was a time when people, especially women or anyone not CIS white man, was put into a box. And getting out of that box took a kind of fearlessness that I honor and I mourn.
It didn't grab me from the start. There were a lot of characters that I never super cared enough to keep straight. But I cared about Joan and the dreams she was trying to make come true while staying true to herself at the same time. The last hour of this book was so powerful and painful and beautiful at the same time. Four stars for making me care and making me teary and reminding me that the fact we've made it into space at all is a literal miracle.
No comments:
Post a Comment