Bewilderment

Richard Powers’s novel centers on Theo Byrne, an astrobiologist who searches for life on distant planets while raising his nine-year-old son, Robin, alone after the death of the boy’s mother. Robin, troubled and fiercely attuned to a dying planet, enters an experimental neurofeedback treatment. Tender and urgent, the book weaves wonder about the cosmos together with grief, love, and fear for the Earth’s future.