In her first novel, God Is an Astronaut, Alyson Foster tells a story entirely in juicy, funny, self-deprecating e-mails from botany professor Jessica Frobisher to her colleague Arthur, a former lover and confidant who is on a field sabbatical in Canada. We don't see Arthur's responses, yet Foster skillfully presents a full picture of him and a dozen other well-developed characters strictly through Jess's observations and distinctive voice. Jess is born to write e-mail, tapping out missives during airport layovers as if they were uninhibited postcoital pillow talk--frank, loving, smart, vulnerable.
Surprisingly, Jess's one-way e-mail narration builds a solid plot filled with digressions, drama and anticipation. Jess, her aerospace engineer/entrepreneur husband, Liam, and their two preschool children are caught in the wash of intrusive media attention after the tragic explosion of a shuttle launched by Liam's private space-travel company, Spaceco, dooming its four "one-percenter" passengers. Though Jess becomes further estranged from Liam, she reluctantly agrees to support Liam's company by riding the next Spaceco shuttle. Only her candid e-mails to Arthur provide her with a platform to sort things out and share her ambivalence.
God Is an Astronaut covers a lot of ground: science, family, love, media, horticulture, rocketry. Foster also gets in plenty of shots at modern pretension, like the angst of privileged academics, selfish Evangelicals like Jess's occasional babysitting neighbor, global-warming fanatics and overzealous lawn-care professionals. However, when Jess is finally circling Earth from 200 kilometers with a God's-eye view of its geography and weather, her troubles, like bad storm days, are given perspective: "It's always lightning on Earth somewhere." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.