Ascensión

Leigh grows up in Rotterdam, captivated by the escape the port offers from her unhappy domestic life and irascible father. Enchanted by the underwater world of her childhood, she majors in marine biology and travels the world to study primitive organisms. When a new trench is discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, Ella Leigh joins the exploration team in hopes of finding evidence of Earth's first life forms. What she finds, however, calls into question everything we know about our beginnings. Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave Desert and to work for an ambitious new space agency. As she delves deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic Trench is just one of several unexplained phenomena occurring around the world. All the pieces come together to suggest a pattern beyond human comprehension. Leigh knows that continuing to work there will mean leaving her sick mother and younger sister behind, and she is faced with an impossible choice: stay with her family or embark on a journey across the cosmos. Exploring the natural world with the awe and reverence we usually reserve for the stars, Ascension is an emotional and deeply probing epic that addresses the biggest questions of existence to illuminate the subtlest details of the human heart. It also shows how, no matter how far away we are and how far we have lost hope, we will always try to return to the people and places that are our home.