The Big Bang Symphony by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

For everyone mesmerized by Werner Herzog's Antarctic documentary Encounters at the End of the World, Lucy Jane Bledsoe's rippingly good new novel The Big Bang Symphony provides a return trip into the minds of the scientists and misfits who choose to work in the extreme cold of the McMurdo Station. Bledsoe has traveled there three times (twice on National Science Foundation fellowships) and in many ways her details are better than Herzog's. After reading that first time visitors are called "fingees" (from FNG, for "f---in' new guy"), you'll never doubt her authority.

A lifelong adventure dyke, Bledsoe confidently straddles two worlds in this novel: down there and up here, but also commercial and literary fiction. The book opens with two of her three female protagonists arriving in Antarctica on an Air Force plane that hits a severe storm and has no choice but to crash land blind. Bledsoe relates this with a thrilling matter of factness, which makes sense once you realize flights spend all their fuel crossing the ocean and can't possibly turn back for New Zealand. The high drama continues apace as perpetual wanderer and camp cook Rosie (after finding a young woman who froze to death after the crash) embarks on an affair of big consequences with a married photographer; geologist Alice finally breaks free of her passive manipulative mother; and lesbian, composer Mikala overcomes serious block three years after her partner's death and must decide whether to confront a famous scientist also in Antarctica that he is her longlost father. These broad plot strokes are balanced with considerations of art, sex, science, chosen families, biological ties, and the meaning of home. With fifty-eight chapters in 330 pages, Bledsoe keeps things moving. She packs her book with lively, libidinous, oddball characters, the very most alluring and dangerous of which is the beautifully realized frozen landscape. Don't miss this chance to feel like you've spent a season there.

Catch up with Lucy on her travels this month and next:

Saturday, May 8, Corte Madera, CA

May 13 - 16, Saints & Sinner Book Fest, New Orleans

Monday, May 17, Oxford, MS

Tuesday, May 18, Atlanta, GA

Wednesday, May 19, Chicago

Wednesday, June 2, San Francisco

Wednesday, June 16, Seattle

Thursday, June 17, Portland, OR

Tuesday, June 22, Bellingham, WA