-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
The day of the accident, Jess is in the backyard with a chainsaw, clearing space to build the greenhouse she's always wanted. And, as always, she is thinking of Arthur. Arthur, her colleague in the botany department, who never believed she'd actually start the project. Arthur, who has cut off contact, escaping to the subarctic to study the pines. But now there has been a disaster, connected to Jess's husband's space tourism business: the explosion of a shuttle filled with commercial passengers, igniting a media frenzy on her family's doorstep. Jess's engineer husband is implicated, and she knows there is information he's withholding from her, even as the cameras turn to her for answers.
Struggling, Jess writes to the only person she can be candid with. She writes to Arthur. And in her emails, freighted with longing, regret, and the old habits of seduction, she tries to untangle how her life has changed in one instant, but also slowly, and how it might change still. Unfolding through Jess's emails to Arthur, written in glimmering prose, this extraordinary debut is a dazzling modern-day love story.
"While the plot is smart and raises sharp questions about the dubious ethics of extreme tourism, the epistolary form prevents the reader from becoming completely immersed in the story." - Publishers Weekly
"Foster expertly builds suspense…[Her] absorbing character study couched in a very contemporary cautionary tale is likely to find many fans." - Booklist
"The email setup works unobtrusively to relate events, and the propulsive prose offers a fine portrait of a woman in distress but not going under." - Library Journal
This information about God Is an Astronaut 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.
Alyson Foster grew up in Michigan and earned her B.A. in creative writing from the University of Michigan, winning a Hopwood Award for her fiction. She received her M.F.A. from George Mason University, where she was a Completion Fellow. Her short fiction has appeared in publications including Glimmer Train, the Iowa Review, Ascent, and the Kenyon Review. Foster lives in Washington, D.C., where she works for the National Geographic library and writes for the National Geographic News Watch blog
If you liked God Is an Astronaut, try these:
by Emma Pattee
Published 2025
Set over the course of one day, a heart-racing debut about a woman facing the unimaginable, determined to find safety.
by Rufi Thorpe
Published 2025
A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman's attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.
by Megan Angelo
Published 2020
An electrifying story of two ambitious friends, the dark choices they make and the profound moment that changes the meaning of privacy forever.
L.A. Women by Ella Berman
Two ambitious writers in 1960s LA face betrayal when one writes a novel based on the other's life.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
