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A Novel
by Alexandra Oliva
Arrival meets Wild Dark Shore in this captivating novel that follows a family over fifty years—a bold and compassionate exploration of the universe around us and what it truly means to be human.
It's March 1980, and Carol Girard and her husband are living an ordinary life in a small town in the Adirondacks. They have just had their first child, and though Carol is struggling with the challenges of new motherhood, her future seems clear. Until something extraordinary happens: an inexplicable flickering of light in the sky, which is ultimately determined to be communication from intelligent life on another planet. But these beings are eleven light-years away, and nothing is known about them other than the fact that they seem to know we exist too. And so begins a decades-long exchange of messages with this mysterious, faraway civilization.
As humanity reels from a shifting understanding of its place in the universe, we follow the stories of the Girard family: Carol, whose fascination with this other life sparks a desperate search for spiritual meaning; Michael, her loyal son, who finds solace not in the stars above his head but in the ground beneath his feet; and Ro, Carol's bright and ambitious daughter, whose childhood goal to work in interstellar communication will evolve into something far grander.
Tracing five decades of love, loss, ambition, and self-discovery, The Radiant Dark is a stunning examination of a family navigating their lives with the knowledge that we are not alone.
"Fascinating ... It is told beautifully, in emotionally complex and heartfelt storytelling. A dollop of SF enlivens this thought-provoking family saga." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[B]lends a quiet family drama with a spellbinding saga of extraterrestrial contact ... . This will fascinate readers." —Publishers Weekly
"An inventive, moving family drama set against the backdrop of a wondrous but plausible development, Oliva's third outing will delight readers who appreciate psychologically nuanced, character-driven, speculative fiction." —Booklist
"Alexandra Oliva is a master storyteller, her work is atmospheric, imaginative, and riveting. The Radiant Dark is a sprawling epic of the fate of one family, foretold in the stars through time and space. The Girard family is unforgettable in their ties to one another and the universe they live in. It's all here. Mystery. Wonder. Surprise—and the power of love. An immersive read that will lead you home." —Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The View from Lake Como
"The Radiant Dark is unforgettable. Daring and expansive, soul-stirring, and precise, this is a novel about love and belonging—to our ancestors and descendants, our families and ourselves, and to one another. I ached and I cried, my heart was filled with a gentle hope for the people who come after us. Oliva writes with triumphant beauty: we are not alone." —Eliana Ramage, author of To the Moon and Back
This information about The Radiant Dark was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Alexandra Oliva is the author of The Last One, her debut which was selected as a Best Book of 2016 by The Seattle Times and was translated into twenty-five languages; and Forget Me Not. She grew up in a tiny town in New York's Adirondack Mountains and received her BA from Yale University and her MFA from The New School. She now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family.
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