Sloane is a recently widowed therapist who has quietly decided that being the one who holds means never getting to be held. Theodora is her aging, genetically engineered, unfailingly honest dog — who decides otherwise, and talks her into the stars.
Aboard a passenger ship bound for a distant green planet, they find a crew that isn't human, a couple learning to love across a language neither fully speaks, a small mystery folded into a stranger's bag, and — slowly, against everything Sloane believes about herself — a family. Not the one she lost. A new one, that simply decides she's theirs and declines to be argued out of it.
A tender, witty, character-first novel about grief and the family you find, with dry humor (most of it from the dog) layered over real warmth. For readers who loved Becky Chambers and Fredrik Backman.
