In Ascension – Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award

Our summary description

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Leigh’s childhood in Rotterdam is shaped by the pull of the water and the need to escape a volatile home. The sea offers both refuge and fascination, leading her toward a life in marine biology and a career spent studying the planet’s most ancient organisms. When a vast trench is discovered deep in the Atlantic, Leigh joins the expedition believing it may hold clues to the earliest forms of life on Earth.

What she finds unsettles that hope. The discovery refuses easy explanation and opens a chain of connections that stretch far beyond the ocean floor. Following its implications takes Leigh from the depths of the sea to the stark expanse of the Mojave Desert, and into the orbit of a new and secretive space agency piecing together a pattern that spans the globe.

In Ascension is a novel about origins and ambition, about science as wonder and burden, and about the cost of looking too far ahead. As Leigh is pulled toward answers that lie beyond Earth, she must decide what she is willing to leave behind.