Voyagers

By Meg Charlton

Book Overview

A Debutiful and She Reads "Most Anticipated" * A People "Must-Read Book" * A Good Housekeeping "Books Everyone Will Be Talking About This Summer"

"In the tradition of Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Meg Charlton's Voyagers is a finely written and propulsive novel about the enduring power of friendship. It takes on big issues: the reliability of memory, the price of childhood fame, the ways adults use children for their own purposes. It's also a book about aliens, geared for terrestrials. Which is to say it's complex and human, anchored by a beating heart."--Joshua Henkin

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 this 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 near Palm Springs. When they returned, dazed but unharmed, the six-year-olds' account of their 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 scope 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0063441217
• ISBN13: 9780063441217
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Lovely read

No spoilers here: A bit weird, but lovely, story of 2 kids growing up after an alien abduction. It took me the first chapter to get want to actually continue to read it; by the halfway point, I felt like I could finish it. So glad I did. The telling is all in 1st person, which I thought would jump back and forth, but didn't. The timeline was told in flashbacks, but not actual flashbacks, more like rememberances. Small sections felt like you were being told an off-shoot/side-tangent of the story (kinda like how a friend would).