Eliana Ramage’s To the Moon and Back is the latest pick for Reese Witherspoon’s popular book club.
Ramage’s debut novel, published Tuesday by Avid Reader Press, follows Steph Harper, a Cherokee woman who is determined to join NASA and go to the moon, as she navigates her relationships with her social-media influencer sister, her college girlfriend, and her mother. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus wrote of the novel, which is also a September Book of the Month pick, “This author is as ambitious as her protagonist: There are three novels worth of material here, all good. The moon or bust!”
Witherspoon announced the book’s selection on Instagram, calling it “a breathtaking debut about family, identity, and love across generations.”
On Tuesday, Ramage was a guest on Kirkus’ Fully Booked podcast. “There were many, many different drafts of different books that were similar to this one,” she told host Megan Labrise of the novel’s genesis. “They had the same characters, they were set in different times, but with the same subplots.…I kept thinking that if I separated these things and made them simpler, I thought that would make it easier. Not only were they not any easier, but I kept coming back to how I wanted all of these women together.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
