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From the publisher:
Steph Harper is on the run. She has been all her life, ever since her mother drove 5-year-old Steph and her younger sister through the night to Cherokee Nation, a place they had never been, but where she hoped they might finally belong. In response to the turmoil, Steph sets her sights as far away from Oklahoma as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing get in the way of pursuing the rigorous physical and academic training she knows she will need to be accepted by NASA, and ultimately, to go to the moon.
Spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back encompasses Steph’s turbulent journey, along with the multifaceted and intertwined lives of the three women closest to her: her sister, Kayla, an artist who goes on to become an Indigenous social media influencer, and whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; Steph’s college girlfriend Della Owens, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her Cherokee family through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and Hannah, Steph and Kayla’s mother, who has held up her family’s tribal history as a beacon of inspiration to her children, all the while keeping her own past a secret.
In Steph’s certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with each of these women to the point of breaking, at once betraying their love and generosity, and forcing them to reconsider their own deepest desires in her shadow. Told through an intricately woven tapestry of narrative, To the Moon and Back is a novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths to which one woman will go to find space for herself.
Rapid Rating: High.
Profanity includes 33 uses of strong language, around 25 instances of moderate profanity, about a dozen uses of mild language, and about 30 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes a good number of references to it and to it having happened but hardly any details, except for possibly one scene that’s a few paragraphs of some details; some brief mentions of nudity. Sexual content is all related to same-sex female relationships.
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