A dazzling modern-day love story in 107 emails

As though a gesture could save anyone – in this universe where even the smallest pieces are hurtling away from one another at the speed of light.

That’s all then. Or all I can say right now.

What say you?


Jessica Frobisher is a botany professor at a university in Michigan. Her husband Liam works for a space tourism company called Spaceco. She has a son and a daughter, a nice house – and an intense friendship with Arthur, a fellow botanist, who has departed to the wilds north of Winnipeg, who she emails almost every day and misses every moment.

Then disaster strikes Spaceco. Liam departs for Arizona and Jess wakes up to three TV vans parked in their drive. Jess attempts to keep down to earth by building a greenhouse in her garden, dreaming of orchids and orange trees and roses hanging from the ceiling. But nothing she does can prevent her life beginning to spiral out of control.

Unfolding through Jess’s emails to Arthur, written in glimmering prose, this extraordinary debut is both an exploration of space and of what it is to be human. It is also a love story like no other.