22 Light Years to You

by Sarah Hina

FBT review:

Embark on a journey through time and love with "22 Light Years to You" by Sarah Hina. This gripping literary fiction novel follows astrophysicist Amy Gallagher as she uses the James Webb Space Telescope to unravel the events of her past, shifting the arrow of time from 2022 back to the moment she met her husband in 2000. As Amy delves into her relationships and regrets, she discovers the power of love and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives. From award-winning author Sarah Hina, this poignant tale explores themes of loss, friendship, and the complexities of fate. Discover a special relativity that transcends time and space in this captivating indie book.

Publisher Description:

Every life has an arrow of time. It starts at the beginning, and runs to the end.

But not for Amy Gallagher. As an astrophysicist, Amy has a different conception of time. And now, with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, she is poised to reassemble the events of the past by studying light from the first known stars. In much the same way, 22 LIGHT YEARS TO YOU redshifts Amy's own life, reversing the arrow of time from the year 2022 to the night she first met her husband, Greg, in October 2000.

Following the chain of Octobers past, we see how Amy's transgendered teen both is, and isn't, the person he was as a child. How the love Amy feels for her second husband is but a dim reflection of the passion she knew with Greg, who fell—or jumped—to his death in 2015. How Amy's best friend, Dee, who grew up Black in the same white-bread, Appalachian foothills that Amy did, has a very different story to tell about the two women's friendship—and about the country unraveling around them.

Most lives carry an inflection point: a Big Bang moment separating before from after. The farther we drift from that seismic event, the harder it is to imagine an alternative. But what Amy comes to understand is that fate is a story we tell ourselves to cover for the mistakes of the past. And that love is a force beyond all reason—a special relativity that binds and shapes.

From the author of the award-winning SARABANDE comes a poignant story about love and loss, time and regret, and the pull to look back, when all of the universe is pressing ahead.