- Historical Fiction, Fiction, Romance, LGBT
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space. Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane. As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.
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Character
Classical in form, earnest, grave and effortless.
- classical in formformally daring
- earnestironic
- gravecomic
- effortlessdemanding
- sparerichly built
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About the book
- Author
- Taylor Jenkins Reid
- First published
- 2025
- Pages
- 352
- Publisher
- Doubleday Canada, Ballantine Books, Ambo|Anthos
- Editions
- 6
- Language
- English, Dutch
- ISBN
- 9789026370953
Where to read
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On Open Library, 4 have read it and 51 want to.
“Joan Goodwin gets to the Johnson Space Center well before nine, and Houston is already airless and muggy.”
Taylor Jenkins Reid is the author of the New York Times Bestselling novels *Carrie Soto Is Back*, *Malibu Rising*, *Daisy Jones and The Six* and *The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo*, as well as *One True Loves*, *Maybe in Another Life*, *After I Do*, and *Forever, Interrupted*. Her books have been chosen by Reese’s Book Club, Read with Jenna, Indie Next, Best of Amazon, and Book of the Month. Her novel, *Daisy Jones and The Six*, is now a limited series on Amazon Prime. She lives in Los Angeles.
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