Nicholas Christopher

At a Manhattan planetarium in 1965, ten-year-old Enzo and his young aunt, Mala, are separated, an event that profoundly alters the rest of their lives. In an epic tale of love and destiny, A Trip to the Stars charts their paths over the next fifteen years as they search for each other and, in the process, discover themselves. As Enzo and Mala cross continents and seas on their separate journeys, they encounter a dizzying array of people: an arachnologist in New Orleans, an asteroid specialist, a wounded B-52 navigator in Vietnam, a professional mind reader, a maverick NASA astronomer, and countless others. All of them are searching for things they have lost -- loved ones, opportunities, enlightenment. Through them Mala and Enzo discover a world steeped in mystery, romance, and intellectual adventure. A Trip to the Stars is both a love story and a coming-of-age story that shows us what happens when we lose what matters most. Fusing imagination and suspense with remarkable narrative skill, Nicholas Christopher builds a story of tremendous scope that lingers in detail and sensation long after the last page has been turned.

A Novel

A Trip To The Stars

sage

“You say you and he only had so little time together as lovers. Whenever I come here, I'm reminded of a story I heard when I visited India. Long before there were telescopes, Hindu cosmographers concluded that the universe was composed of billions of galaxies. They defined the life cycle of a galaxy as an eon. Asked the length of an eon, they replied: Imagine a mountain of solid rock, bigger than the Himalayas, which a man brushes with a piece of silk once every century; the time it would take him to wear away the entire mountain is an eon. When you consider time in that light, days, years, centuries begin to blur, don't you think? How you fill any one day -while emptying it of distractions-is all that matters. It sounds as if you filled your few days to the brim. Also, Mala,” he smiled, “I do believe that there are stars which fall to earth. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to be around when they do.”

“I’ve lost things too. But, as you know, in another way those become the very things that never leave you.”

A Trip To The Stars quotes

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