{ "item_title" : "Under Story", "item_author" : [" Chloe Benjamin "], "item_description" : "Click here for the Autographed copyThe New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists returns with an intimate yet epic love story—and a sweeping odyssey of scientific discovery. Under Story invites us to consider the promise of this life, what might lie beyond it, and how far we would go for more time with the people we love, cementing Chloe Benjamin’s place among our best, and most lasting, storytellers.“We wake up to tomorrow, never yesterday.”At the end of the world, biologist Laurel Salter is hiding from everything she’s ever known. For ten hours a day, six days per week, she works as a dishwasher at McMurdo Station, an isolated research base in Antarctica. She tells no one that before she arrived, she was a renowned young scientist with a promising career, a husband, and a family. But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can’t outrun her past. When a strange light appears across the ice—and draws a group of physicists to McMurdo—her former husband, Eli, won't be far behind. Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive. And though Eli is reluctant to test her wildest theory, Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole, and into a world, they can barely imagine. Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them—to turn back the clock and live their story a second time? A breathless page-turner and a love letter to our planet, Under Story grapples with the great questions of our time: human hubris, the precarity of the natural world, and the mysterious webs of consciousness that bind us. A modern epic of science and soul, of bravery and redemption, it offers a vision of the future that demands we reckon with what we owe to one another, and to the earth itself. Chloe Benjamin is the author of The Immortalists, a New York Times bestseller, and The Anatomy of Dreams. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, The Immortalists was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was longlisted for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Originally from San Francisco, CA, Chloe is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives with her husband in San Francisco.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/354/521/0593545214_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "32.00", "online_price" : "20.80", "our_price" : "20.80", "club_price" : "20.80", "savings_pct" : "35", "savings_amt" : "11.20", "club_savings_pct" : "35", "club_savings_amt" : "11.20", "discount_pct" : "41.5", "store_price" : "32.00" } }

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In Chloe Benjamin’s exquisitely imagined and emotionally rich Under Story, a woman moves to Antarctica in search of a fresh start and finds far more than she expected. It’s an extreme choice. The icebound landmass where McMurdo Station is situated sees “less rain than the Sahara” and is so remote that airplane travel is restricted for months at a time. But researcher Laurel Salter is desperate, and a radical move feels necessary. She’s lost interest in her life and work—“even nature’s miracles were stripped, for her, of awe”—so when her mother tells her about a childhood friend living in Antarctica, she latches on to the idea and applies to be a dishwasher at McMurdo. The move sets Laurel on a path to the change she yearns for. She settles in with the fellow “stewards,” cooking and cleaning for the scientists at the station, and starts to forge connections. But the novel and Laurel’s resurrection really take flight when Laurel’s ex-husband, Eli, shows up unexpectedly. Though Eli and Laurel aren’t on good terms, both are drawn to the environmental anomaly on the island: the Arc, a “small dome of light” that “appears to sit over the ocean.” It’s what lured Eli, a physicist, to McMurdo. “Faintly pink and translucent, with an iridescent skin” that has no scientific explanation, the Arc spurs them to think that Eli’s radical theory about two parallel universes might be true. He and Laurel grasp at the possibility of traveling to that parallel realm to correct the tragedy that led to their separation. A moving, endlessly imaginative exploration ensues as Laurel and Eli seek healing on an otherworldly journey. What’s most remarkable about Under Story is how Benjamin (The Immortalists) balances speculative physics with a deeply relatable story of love and grief. For a book involving multiple dimensions and timelines, Under Story is incredibly grounded. Anyone who’s ever endured profound loss or felt stuck will recognize Laurel’s state of mind. Benjamin draws the depth of what Laurel and Eli are going through with aching precision, in prose that often reads like poetry, making this expansive literary sci-fi tale powerfully resonant.