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Title details for The Return by Joseph Helmreich - Available

The Return

by Joseph Helmreich
Richard Powers
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
During a live television broadcast on the night of a lunar eclipse, renowned astrophysicist Andrew Leland is suddenly lifted into the sky by a giant spacecraft and taken away for all to see. Six years later, he turns up wandering in a South American desert, thin, bearded, a ghost of his former self. Upon his return he denies ever having been abducted, refuses to cooperate with the government or media, and disappears from the public eye, supposedly becoming a hermit somewhere in the woodlands of the Midwest.Meanwhile, much like J. D. Salinger, Leland inspires legions of cultish devotees, including a young physics graduate student named Shawn Ferris who is obsessed with finding out what really happened to him. When Shawn finally tracks Leland down, he discovers that he has not been hiding in the woods—he's been on the run for years, continuously hunted by a secret organization that has pursued him across multiple continents and is determined to force him into revealing what he knows.Shawn soon joins Leland on the run. Though Leland is at first reluctant to reveal anything about his experiences in space, Shawn will soon learn the truth about his abduction and the real reason for his return and will find himself caught up in a global conspiracy that puts more than just one planet in danger.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 14, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781504757218
      • File size: 263625 KB
      • Duration: 09:09:13

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 30, 2017
      An artfully crafted opening line (“If the conspiracy theorists are right and it never happened, then the day it didn’t happen began innocently enough”) paves the way for an intriguing setup in Helmreich’s debut novel of humankind’s first encounter with alien intelligence. The coinciding of a lunar eclipse with the winter solstice prompted television coverage that inadvertently captured live video of an alien abduction in California. The victim, “washed-up celebrity physicist” Dr. Andrew Leland, who had been retained to provide expert commentary on the celestial event, was seen lifted up into the sky by an unseen force emanating from a green structure. Almost seven years later, Leland is found wandering in a desert, but he denies knowing anything about the abduction, claiming that he retired from scientific research and has spent those years working as a farmhand. Brilliant young physicist Shawn Ferris becomes obsessed with learning the truth about what happened to Leland. The plot takes some clever turns, though the ending doesn’t quite live up to the beginning, and Helmreich’s characters are satisfyingly multidimensional.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Paul Michael Garcia gives a steady narration of this audiobook made of equal parts science fiction and suspense. Central to the story is Shawn, a young physicist who has become obsessed with the reappearance of Andrew Leland, also a physicist, a number of years after Leland was dramatically pulled into the sky by a mysterious light. Garcia brings an even, unruffled level of energy to Leland, capturing the timid man as someone who is easily manipulated. In contrast, Garcia's portrayal of Shawn embodies a restless energy that pulses with an intellect easily bored but tenacious in tracking Leland down and uncovering the conspiracy in which Leland has inadvertently become involved. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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