GENTLEMEN OF SPACE

Sher's whimsical, elegiac debut novel is about a boy whose father is chosen, in the summer of 1976, to be the first civilian on the moon. The ascent of Jerry Finch—a quixotic Florida junior high school earth science teacher—into the heavens is part of a NASA-sponsored program to revive flagging public interest in space exploration. Narrator Georgie Finch, who was nine years old at the time, recalls the strain that his father's selection brought to the family, as Georgie's skeptical mother, Barbara ("the moon... is a veritable palace of idiots"), tries to suppress her worry about the trip. During the week and a half that Jerry is in space, strange things begin to happen: Georgie receives several phone calls from his father, telling him what it's like in space. Barbara learns that their 16-year-old babysitter, Angie, has been having an affair with Jerry and is now pregnant. And then, Jerry disappears. Georgie, his mother and their town become the center of a media spectacle. The public soon learns of Jerry's affair with the teenager, and Barbara is forced into the role of Jackie O.–style celebrity widow. And while the world's attention is focused on the moon and the search for Jerry, Georgie continues receiving phone calls from his father, who tries to explain to Georgie the mystical nature of the moon and the special connection he feels to it. Sher lets these enigmatic communications—which everyone assumes are Georgie's grief-stricken fantasies—stand without comment, as Georgie himself reflects on the vagaries of memory and the difficulty of sorting out truth and fiction. The novel is an original, haunting twist on a story of childhood loss. (Apr.)