Description

‘Will break your heart and take you to the stars. I loved it.’ Kiley Reid

‘A breathtaking debut about family, identity, and love across generations.’ Reese Witherspoon

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Steph Harper was born running. Now she is reaching for the moon.

When Steph was five, her mother fled with Steph and her little sister to a small Cherokee community, searching for safety, home and a future.

Years later, Steph has one impossible ambition: to become the first Cherokee astronaut. To get there, she is willing to leave almost everything behind – her past, her family, and the people who know her best.

But ambition has a gravity of its own. As Steph chases the stars, the women closest to her are pulled into their own reckonings: Kayla, her brilliant younger sister; Hannah, the mother guarding a buried family history; and Della, the girlfriend who challenges Steph’s idea of escape.

Spanning decades, continents and one unforgettable family, To the Moon and Back is a sweeping literary family saga about queer love, Cherokee identity, mothers and daughters, sacrifice and the price of chasing a dream when home still has a hold on you.

A Reese’s Book Club Pick for readers who love emotionally powerful book club fiction.

‘A singular, sonorous, wholehearted novel, one I wanted to devour and savour at once.’ Claire Lombardo, bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had

‘A powerful story about the mixture of combativeness, compromise and love that forms the heart of a family.’ Kaliane Bradley, bestselling author of The Ministry of Time

Publisher Review

To the Moon and Back is a singular, sonorous, wholehearted novel, one I wanted to devour and savor at once. Eliana Ramage is a dynamite writer – every sentence positively shimmers. * Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had and Same As It Ever Was * Ramage will break your heart and take you to the stars. From painfully accurate depictions of adolescence, to effortless jumps through time and space – I loved it all. * Kiley Reid, author of Such A Fun Age * A novel that has the generosity to be many things – bittersweet, thrillingly perceptive, multi-threaded, enormously funny. To the Moon and Back is a wonderful book about a Cherokee Nation woman who, over several decades, brings herself to reckon with the true price of her at-any-cost ambition to become an astronaut; and a powerful story about the mixture of combativeness, compromise and love that forms the heart of a family. * Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time * An epic, enthralling and deeply humane novel of family bonds, belonging and the relentless pursuit of one’s dream, that will make you laugh and cry along the way. Eliana Ramage is a formidable talent, and writes with so much heart and hope: I loved it. * Ceclie Pin, author of Wandering Souls * A story of decisions; right, wrong and everything in between, To the Moon and Back explores love and ambition and all its complicated messiness. With characters so perfectly rendered that you’ll want to hug them or give them a shake, Eliana Ramage explores what it means to belong in this immersive and exciting debut. * Amanda Peters, author of The Berry Pickers * To the Moon and Back is a passionate and compulsively readable novel. Dare I say, a stellar debut. * Margot Livesey, author of The Road to Belhaven * A soaring masterpiece that mixes the terror, care, betrayal, and death-defying love of family with deliciously abject lesbian drama and the beautifully self-destructive doggedness of possessing a singular dream. Every character in this novel will stay with you forever. I love this book. * Casey Plett, author of A Dream of a Woman * Eliana Ramage’s To the Moon and Back is a captivating debut about family, queer identity, love, career and heritage. This novel has something for everyone. * De’Shawn Charles Winslow, author of In West Mills * To The Moon and Back simply soars. Eliana Ramage has given us a brilliant, faceted, warm-hearted novel, with characters to love and truly root for, and pages that seem to turn themselves. * Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of the National Book Award Finalist All This Could Be Different * This author is as ambitious as her protagonist: there are three novels worth of material here, all good. The moon or bust! * Kirkus Reviews *