The Unfixed Stars

A novel inspired by the true story of the farmboy Clyde Tombaugh and his discovery of the ninth planet, set in the last, vibrant, gin-soaked months of the flapper era. It's 1928 and Clyde Tombaugh, the boy who will discover Pluto, is out in the farmyard grinding the lens for his own telescope under the immense Kansas sky. A thousand miles away in Flagstaff, Arizona, the staff of Lowell Observatory are preparing to resume the long-interrupted search for Planet X. Meanwhile, the rich heir to a chemical fortune has decided to come west to hunt for dinosaurs and for God. And in Cambridge, a beautiful Mary is slipping into insanity while her heavyweight-champion boyfriend looks on certain he is about to lose her and determined to keep her at any cost. Following Tombaugh's unlikely path, The Unfixed Stars touches on madness, mathematics, music, astrophysics, heavyweight boxing, dinosaur hunting, shipwrecks and what happens when the greatest romance of your life becomes the source of your life's greatest sorrow.