Jesse Lee Kercheval opens her story in Cocoa, Florida, in 1966 as a precocious ten-year-old whose family—father, mother, two little girls—is trying to ride the Space Race’s tide of optimism. But even as the rockets keep going up, the Kercheval family slowly spirals down.

Jesse Lee Kercheval was born in France and raised in Florida. She is the author of thirteen books of poetry, fiction, and memoir including the novels The Museum of Happiness and My Life as a Silent Movie and the writing text Building Fiction. The Sally Mead Hands Professor of English, she teaches creative writing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.