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Under Story - Hardcover

Benjamin, Chloe

 
9780593545218: Under Story
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593545214 ISBN 13: 9780593545218
Verlag: Putnam Pub Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

The New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists returns with an intimate yet epic love story—and a sweeping odyssey of scientific discovery. Under Story invites us to consider the promise of this life, what might lie beyond it, and how far we would go for more time with the people we love, cementing Chloe Benjamin’s place among our best, and most lasting, storytellers.

“We wake up to tomorrow, never yesterday.”

At the end of the world, biologist Laurel Salter is hiding from everything she’s ever known. For ten hours a day, six days per week, she works as a dishwasher at McMurdo Station, an isolated research base in Antarctica. She tells no one that before she arrived, she was a renowned young scientist with a promising career, a husband, and a family.

But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can’t outrun her past. When a strange light appears across the ice—and draws a group of physicists to McMurdo—her former husband, Eli, won't be far behind.

Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive. And though Eli is reluctant to test her wildest theory, Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole, and into a world, they can barely imagine. Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them—to turn back the clock and live their story a second time?

A breathless page-turner and a love letter to our planet, Under Story grapples with the great questions of our time: human hubris, the precarity of the natural world, and the mysterious webs of consciousness that bind us. A modern epic of science and soul, of bravery and redemption, it offers a vision of the future that demands we reckon with what we owe to one another, and to the earth itself.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Chloe Benjamin is the author of The Immortalists, a New York Times bestseller, and The Anatomy of Dreams. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, The Immortalists was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was longlisted for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Originally from San Francisco, CA, Chloe is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives with her husband in San Francisco.

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1

Terra Australis

The descent into Antarctica takes Laurel by surprise. There are no windows on the plane, so she can't see the ice rise to meet her.

The aircraft, a C-17, is taller than any commercial vessel; ten feet above her head, the ceiling curves like a spaceship. People sit along the perimeter, most wearing headphones, some sleeping in the Big Red jackets they received at the Clothing Distribution Center in New Zealand. The newcomers keep their seat belts on. One of the old-timers-a man in Carhartts, sunglasses, and a short-sleeved shirt-unbuckles, ducks below chains, and lies down against a wooden cargo container, a novel tucked under his elbow.

Across from Laurel, a Black woman crosses her arms over her stomach, her short Afro behind a headband. A white man dozes into his scarf; little more than his brown curls are visible. He opens his eyes just before they touch down. During spring and summer-which take place, at the bottom of the world, from October to February-the Ross Sea is still eight feet thick, strong enough to serve as a runway.

Passengers shoulder into their jackets and begin to deplane: the old-timers sure-footed, the newcomers waddling in their government-issued boots. Cold sweeps over them in waves. The sky reminds Laurel less of Earth than of some gaseous planet, streams of indigo and violet and shocking pink, the setting sun layered between them. The mountain ranges glint behind a haze of blowing snow.

A giant red vehicle trundles toward them; "IVAN" THE TERRA BUS is painted on one side. Ivan's driver, a cheerful man in a balaclava, tells them that the bus weighs seventy thousand pounds. Laurel takes a seat beside the woman who sat across from her on the plane. After fifteen minutes, the driver announces that they've crossed the transition point where ice gives way to solid rock, and Laurel's hands unclench. Soon she sees the drab mid-century buildings that make up McMurdo Station.

The woman sitting next to Laurel snorts. "I didn't think Antarctica would look like February in Wisconsin."

Laurel smiles. "Crusty slush? Check. Giant Caterpillar machines?"

"Check." The woman pushes her sunglasses on top of her head and holds out a hand. "Charlie Morrison, from Milwaukee."

"Laurel Salter, from Madison."

"We could have carpooled to O'Hare."

"Should have. I'd have been a lot less nervous," says Laurel. "Is it your first time, too?"

Charlie nods. She looks to be near Laurel's age, thirty-six. Her eyes are perceptive, and her broad cheekbones taper to a delicate chin.

They walk together as the experts lead the newbies to the dorms. Laurel doesn't ask what brought Charlie to McMurdo, and Charlie doesn't ask her. Beyond the dirt roads of the base, the landscape is cratered, white, and endless. Pale yellow ribbons weave between clouds; mist swirls with the body of dust.

Laurel's tendency is to observe. When foraging for fungi, she looks for aberration: fleshy folds against wood, roundness amid angles. Here, something interrupts the line of the horizon. A small dome of light appears to sit over the ocean. It reminds Laurel of a bubble cut in two: faintly pink and translucent, with an iridescent skin.

The sight pulls her. It looks not of this world. Even from miles away, it seems to make a sound: a crackle, low but generative, constant.

But when she blinks, it disappears.

"Did you see that?" Laurel asks, stopping. In its absence, the sky looks innocuous, like a theater after a play.

"See what?" asks Charlie.

Laurel shakes her head. "I haven't slept well in forty-eight hours. I think I'm losing my mind."

"You wouldn't be the only one. Have you heard what they say around here? 'When you shake the world,'" Charlie says, "'the oddballs fall to the bottom.'"

oo


It was Laurel’s mother, Clare, who told her about the job in Antarctica. In July, Laurel was describing her trouble at work-how she moved robotically through tasks; how even nature’s miracles were stripped, for her, of awe-when Clare put a hand on her wrist.

"Do you know," she said, as if this were related, "where Julie Javurek is living at the moment?"

"Jules?" asked Laurel. They sat in folding chairs in Laurel's backyard. She hadn't spoken to Jules Javurek, her childhood neighbor, in fifteen years. "Where?"

"Guess," said Clare.

Laurel had always thought of her mother as ruthlessly practical. During Laurel's childhood, Clare had not allowed herself to sit until the entire kitchen had been cleaned, or the last apple tree pruned. In older age, though, she had adopted a playfulness that aggravated Laurel, if only because it had come after-and therefore seemed related to-the death of Pete Salter, Laurel's father.

"I don't know," said Laurel. "Chicago?"

"Chicago!" Clare laughed. "No, a little further south. Antarctica."

Laurel had brought an ice pack outside, to counter the heat, and now she put it behind her neck. "Antarctica? What's she doing there?"

"Washing dishes, apparently," said Clare. "Before that, she was bartending in Buenos Aires. I suppose she's some kind of professional traveler."

That night, unable to sleep, Laurel Googled "dishwasher Antarctica." The correct term, she learned, was kitchen steward. Stewards at McMurdo Station were tasked with cooking and cleaning for the base's eclectic group of residents: scientists, construction workers, engineers, janitors, firefighters, administrators, employees at the world's southernmost post office. On shift six days per week, she would have little time to think. It was work she could do, might even enjoy doing-manual work, meditative in its way, and useful. Researchers on base studied solar physics and ocean systems, climate change and geology. She could support these efforts, even if she wasn't working as a scientist herself.

At three in the morning, she put the computer away. Crazy, she told herself.

But the next day, Laurel thought of Antarctica again. The landscape was nothing like the one she knew: she would trade Wisconsin's pastures and fertile prairie for volcanic rock and ice. There would be almost none of the fungi she studied, which associated with plant roots. Children weren't allowed on base. Even the light-six months of sun followed by six months of darkness-would fool her, make her think she was living someone else's life.

She found an old email address for Jules. One month later, Jules replied with the name of a recruiter to contact in the States. The tone of the email was friendly, but Jules asked no questions. Maybe she knew what had happened, and this was a gesture of kindness-a mercy, not making Laurel explain. Or maybe Jules was surrounded by the people Clare had described, these professional travelers. Maybe she wasn't surprised to hear from someone who wanted to escape.

Laurel told no one she was applying. It was a lark, a double life she was only fantasizing about-until she received a call from the recruiter. He was intrigued by her application, a scientist submitting to be a dishwasher. Had she applied for the right position? Laurel shut the door to her office. She babbled about the value of a break. He asked if she had experience living remotely, or communally. The conversation stalled. She imagined the recruiter tossing her résumé in favor of twenty-five-year-olds with restaurant experience, young people whose applications made sense.

"The truth is," she said, "I need to change my life."

Two days later, she received an email with an alternate contract. There was no guarantee of a job-those came with primary contracts-but Laurel should get physically qualified as...

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Verlag
Putnam Pub Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593545214
ISBN 13 
9780593545218
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
512
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Verantwortliche Person
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