It’s not a mission to another planet. It’s an escape from this one.
When a private company offers ninety civilians a one-way ticket to Mars—plus five million dollars—Daniel McCauley says yes. His marriage is broken. His future is closing in. And for a man with nowhere left to go, outer space sounds like freedom.
To the world, it’s a bold leap toward progress.
To Daniel, it’s a clean break from the life he’s quietly unraveling.
To Taylor, his fifteen-year-old daughter, it’s abandonment dressed up as destiny.
Nearly a year later, she discovers a flash drive buried behind his old desk—one her father never meant to leave behind. What it contains will crack open everything she thought she knew about the mission... and about the man she called Dad.
This isn’t a sci-fi story. Not even close.
It’s a story about what we hide to protect the people we love—and what it costs when the truth finally comes home.
Genre: Literary Fiction
When a private company offers ninety civilians a one-way ticket to Mars—plus five million dollars—Daniel McCauley says yes. His marriage is broken. His future is closing in. And for a man with nowhere left to go, outer space sounds like freedom.
To the world, it’s a bold leap toward progress.
To Daniel, it’s a clean break from the life he’s quietly unraveling.
To Taylor, his fifteen-year-old daughter, it’s abandonment dressed up as destiny.
Nearly a year later, she discovers a flash drive buried behind his old desk—one her father never meant to leave behind. What it contains will crack open everything she thought she knew about the mission... and about the man she called Dad.
This isn’t a sci-fi story. Not even close.
It’s a story about what we hide to protect the people we love—and what it costs when the truth finally comes home.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Used availability for Mitchell Lanigan's False Orbit