Enlightenment: An NPR Best Book of the Year

From the author of The Essex Serpent, this novel follows Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay over twenty years. The two are unlikely best friends living in the small Essex town of Aldleigh, separated by three decades in age but united as kindred spirits torn between their Baptist faith and desire to explore beyond their community. When romantic relationships damage their friendship, Thomas becomes obsessed with a historical mystery involving a vanished nineteenth-century astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor, while Grace leaves Aldleigh for London. Over two decades, through coincidence and design, their lives intersect again as the astronomer's mystery unfolds. The novel explores what it means to love and be loved, what is fixed and mutable, how much of fate is predestined, and whether Thomas and Grace can find their way back to each other. The novel is structured as a baroque, genre-bending work of ideas, ghosts, and hidden histories that examines the meeting point of religion and science. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize and named a best book of the year by NPR, Telegraph, Washington Post, and The New Yorker.