Wanderers

As they look to the stars, what are they missing back home?  'Phenomenal. A transcendent journey into the mysteries of space and self. Howrey's expansive vision left me awestruck' RUTH OZEKI, author of A Tale for the Time Being Helen Kane may not be the best mother in the world, but she is one of the world's best astronauts and when, at fifty-three, she's offered a chance to train for the first crewed mission to Mars, she doesn't hesitate.  She and her fellow astronauts Sergei and Yoshihiro will be confined in a desert facility, striving to prove themselves, while outside their loved ones – Helen’s actress daughter, Sergei’s teenage son, and Yoshi's lonely businesswoman wife Madoka – pursue complex explorations of their own. All six will find themselves confronting the bonds of love and loyalty, sacrifice and desire. Station Eleven meets We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves in this brilliantly witty and inventive novel of ambition, endeavour and family.  'An astounding, insightful, exhilarating ride' HELEN SEDGWICK, author of The Comet Seekers 'A stealthily brilliant novel. A distinct, shimmering vision of who we are ... at once simple, gorgeous and profoundly moving' PETER NICHOLS, author of The Rocks

‘The Wanderers is a wonderful exploration of space, trust, and what it means to be a conscious creature, finely-tuned and funny from the first page to the last. I loved getting lost in Meg Howrey's off-kilter world of astronauts and their simulated fantasies. She's a writer with an amazing eye for freedom and confinement and the thin line that sometimes lies between the two’, ‘Elegant, thoughtful, gorgeously written. A meditation on solitude, connection, aspiration, imagination and reality, which builds effortlessly to moments of immense power and honesty. There are passages near the end of this book that I will never forget’, ‘The Wanderers is a stealthily brilliant novel. A distinct, shimmering vision of who we are and where we think we want to go. Meg Howrey’s three astronauts and their families seem to embody the whole human race at the signal moment of a growth spurt. They exist, as we do now, at the edge of science fiction, their story propelled by a seriousness and intelligence wrapped in a comic and tender humanity.  Meg Howrey delivers this vision in a prose that feels new, sui generis, its own necessary vehicle, with a kind of sleek precision that is at once simple, gorgeous, and profoundly moving’ , ‘An expansive tale of the costs of human ambition, The Wanderers is unquestionably the work of a brilliant writer at the height of her powers. Meticulously researched and magnificently rendered, Howrey’s dazzling novel on humankind’s most ambitious project is, in itself, a work of wondrous skill and ambition, a book about space that’s truly about people, but also about the lonely wonder of true trailblazers, the disparate cast behind a great life, and the compromises that build success. Fiercely inventive and deeply empathetic, Howrey’s exquisite novel demonstrates that the final frontier may not be space after all’, “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.”

Meg Howrey is a novelist and a former professional dancer and actor. Her non-fiction writing has been published in Vogue, and she is the author of the novels Blind Sight and Cranes Dance. She lives in Los Angeles.