When the Signal—a mysterious transmission pulsing from the edge of the solar system—arrives, the world changes overnight. Planes are grounded, satellites fail, and speculation abounds. With many believing it could be first contact with extraterrestrial life, humanity holds its breath. But for Alex, a thirtysomething lawyer who's spent years distancing himself from the unexplainable, the Signal feels deeply personal—the opening of an old wound. Decades ago, Alex and a girl named Ana both vanished for thirty-six hours while on vacation in Palm Springs. When they returned, dazed but unharmed, the six-year-olds' account of the experience had all the hallmarks of an alien abduction. The media frenzy that followed made them famous, and the long months of child stardom, of talk shows and sitcom cameos, forged a seemingly unbreakable bond between them—until the mystery behind their disappearance began to tear them apart. Now, with the world on edge and the Signal growing stronger, Alex is drawn back to the one person who might have answers. Ana—now a professional advocate for experiencers of extraterrestrial contact—is leading a retreat near Palm Springs, a stone's throw from the site of their childhood disappearance. As the former best friends tentatively reunite, what starts as a quest to confront the reality of their original experience becomes a larger reckoning with friendship, faith, family, and truth itself—what it means to see the stories we tell ourselves for what they really are. With the imaginative soul and propulsive storytelling of Station Eleven and The Ministry of Time, Voyagers is a thrillingly original and brilliantly ambitious literary debut about friendship at the end of the world.
"On the precipice of an extraterrestrial invasion of earth, who would you call? How about your estranged childhood best friend, with whom you survived an alien abduction? Narrator Michael Crouch dryly voices Alex, who, nearing middle age, finds himself haunted by the otherworldly disappearance he experienced with Ana when they were both 7 years old. After years of discombobulating childhood fame, his relationship with his confidant and co-traveler in the cosmos, Ana, is fractured, leaving Alex to spend most of his adult life alone. Crouch narrates with a fascinating mixture of grandiosity and self-deprecation that's entirely appropriate, and even delightful. His confident tenor elevates the supernatural subject matter.
An absurd yet heartwarming debut for true believers and anyone who has ever felt comforted by the idea that we are not alone."
