At the edge of the world, biologist Laurel Salter is hiding from everything she’s ever known. For ten hours a day, six days per week, she works as a dishwasher at McMurdo Station, an isolated research base in Antarctica. She tells no one that before she arrived, she was a renowned young scientist with a promising career and a family. But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can’t escape her past. When a strange light appears across the ice—and draws a group of physicists to McMurdo—her former husband, Eli, won't be far behind. Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive. And though Eli is reluctant to test her wildest theory, Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole and into a world they can barely imagine. Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them—to turn back the clock and live their story a second time?
Expansive ... The novel’s success hinges on your ability to suspend your disbelief as profoundly as you draw upon your capacity to love. With the portals and time travel, the story requires an open mind. Even with such a fantastical plot, Benjamin draws complex, deeply human characters ... Benjamin could have written a far shorter novel. Some may say that less is more. But Under Story isn’t meant to be a minimalist work ... Expands our expectations of living.
Benjamin intimately describes life in Antarctica, elucidates the wondrous communication between fungi and trees that fascinates Laurel and the mind-bending suppositions of quantum physics, all while gradually revealing the tragedy that induces Laurel and Eli to take a crazy-dangerous leap of faith. Veined with fascinating portraits of real-life scientists, this is a magnetizing love story of many dimensions, some gorgeously authentic, others forced in their painstaking speculation. Ultimately this capacious, suspenseful, and deeply moving novel of scientific and emotional quests offers provocative perspectives on obsession, parenting, time, forgiveness, and love.
Fans of Benjamin...will be thrilled as she again delivers on all levels. Equally appropriate for fans of mycelium, odes to the magic of the Earth, and speculation on the myriad possibilities for humanity.
