Atmosphere: A Love Story

Once again, Reid (Carrie Soto Is Back) shows that her prose has the power to launch. She takes the 1980s NASA space shuttle program to new heights in a novel that explores feminism, sexual identity, and humans’ innate desire to find a world bigger than themselves. At the heart of the story is Joan Goodwin, who leaves her quiet life as a physics professor at Rice University when she’s selected to train at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. There, she prepares for space travel alongside pilots, scientists, mission specialists, and engineers who become like family to her. One of these is Vanessa, a brilliant astronaut who challenges Joan’s ideas about love. At the same time, Joan feels anchored to Earth by her family, especially her niece. At the center of the novel is a deadly catastrophe on mission STS-LR9, for which Joan is serving on the ground in Mission Control. The plot unfolds in chapters that move between the STS-LR9 crisis and the years leading up to it, giving glimpses of what happened before that make what’s happening in the moment even more gripping.