AN INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program, about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.
**The first edition paperback of Atmosphere features stenciled edges with a sunset cloud pattern!**
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. She is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA's space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.
Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston's Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, easygoing even when the stakes are high; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
As they become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.
Fast-paced, thrilling and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars.
so lovely
"Loved following both of Joan’s journeys as an astronaut, as well as finding her true self. Joan is everything you want in a lead character: inquisitive, strong, smart, fierce and most of all… courageous. What a meaningful love story navigating trials and tribulations in a time where space explorations is infinite, but people are limited by their bigotry"
