When his field of dreams laid crushed and battered by the unexpected and horrible storm, Clyde Tombaugh thought he would never make it to college or to escape from a farming life in Kansas, but a response to a letter written out of deep frustration and grief changed his world and history. That same year, 1928, the young astronomer, Alan Barber, is working on his Ph.D at Harvard and feels that he has found a method to mathematically beat the others in solving the riddle of Planet X. Going against the grain for a promising Harvard scholar, he opts to go to the now diminishing in prestige Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona with his girlfriend, Mary. Would Alan's plan work? Would the many others also pulled to the Arizona desert with their madcap dreams and schemes also find what they had been seeking?
Michael Byers is a wonderful and meticulous historian who breathes marvelous life into an amazing time in American history. Based on a true story, PERCIVAL'S PLANET chronicles an awesome page-turning story of adventure, rivalry, ambition, and madness. Byers' plot development is exceptional and his many diverse characters are all realistically and compassionately developed as each struggles with their own goals, dreams, demons and life choices. I was especially moved by his portrayal of Clyde's conscientiousness and willingness to do any job, no matter how painfully pernickety it is, both at his home on the Kansas farm or at the Lowell Observatory. His account of Mary and her fragile mental condition and its effect on others was poignant and fascinating. As PERCIVAL'S PLANET is so much more than an extraordinary scientific search, this insightful and compelling novel is sure to be a special reading treat for those who love astronomy as well as for anyone interested in history and human nature. Enjoy!
A novel of ambition and obsession centered on the race to
discover Pluto in 1930, pitting an untrained Kansas farm boy
against the greatest minds of Harvard at the run-down Lowell
Observatory in Arizona In 1928, the boy who will discover
Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh, is on the family farm, grinding a
lens for his own telescope under the immense Kansas sky. In
Flagstaff, Arizona, the staff of Lowell Observatory is about
to resume the late Percival Lowell's interrupted search for
Planet X. Meanwhile, the immensely rich heir to a chemical
fortune has decided to go west to hunt for dinosaurs and in
Cambridge, Massachussetts, the most beautiful girl in
America is going slowly insane while her ex-heavyweight
champion boyfriend stands by helplessly, desperate to do
anything to keep her. Inspired by the true story of Tombaugh
and set in the last gin-soaked months of the flapper era,
Percival's Planet tells the story of the intertwining lives
of half a dozen dreamers, schemers, and madmen. Following
Tombaugh's unlikely path from son of a farmer to discoverer
of a planet, the novel touches on insanity, mathematics,
music, astrophysics, boxing, dinosaur hunting,
shipwrecksβand what happens when the greatest romance of
your life is also the source of your life's greatest sorrow.
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