M31

A "beautiful and terrifying" novel about family and faith, set inside the secret world of UFO cultists (San Francisco Chronicle)

Dash and Dot are the world's most in-demand lecturers on the topic of UFOs and alien abduction. Convinced that we are all descended from M31, the nearest galaxy to ours, they live on the road, on late-night radio call-in shows, and occasionally with their family in a decommissioned church in the Midwest. A radar dish on its steeple and a spaceship in its sanctuary complete the modern nuclear-family setting.

A couple of UFO groupies arrive at the church and everything changes, brought to a head by the combined pressure of their strange beliefs and the ordinary difficulties of modern life. Dash and Dot set out on their ultimate journey, with a destination that cannot be foretold.

This "devastatingly forceful" novel is a masterwork from the author of Going Native and Meditations in Green that "reestablishes its author as a star of the first magnitude." (Washington Post)