By Michael Byers (Hardcover)

Michael Byers' new book is centered around the discovery of Pluto in 1930 at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. What really brings the book to life is the cast of characters who have assembled there. A Kansas farm boy looking to escape the drudgery of his life by making a perfect mirror for his telescope on his farm. A scrappy young astronomer educated at Harvard who wants to show up the rich swells for whom everything seems so easy. A beautiful young woman who is slowly going mad and trying with all her power to resist it. A feckless heir to a fortune who reinvents himself among the old sedimentary rocks of Arizona. The idioms and feelings of the Jazz Age permeate the book throughout. The characters are drawn with a tender love by the sympathetic narrator. In the end, the story is the search for all the lost things in our own lives and about how even if we don't always find exactly what we are looking for, we do sometimes find what we need.