Challenger Park, Stephen Harrigan
Challenger Park, Stephen Harrigan
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Challenger Park

Author: Stephen Harrigan

Narrator: Sam Freed

Abridged: 5 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/11/2006


Synopsis

From the author of the acclaimed and best-selling The Gates of the Alamo, a novel of extraordinary power about what it’s like, and what it means, to journey into space as one of today’s astronauts.

At the novel’s center: Lucy Kincheloe, an astronaut married to an astronaut, the loving mother of two young children, with a fierce ambition to excel in the space program. Her husband, Brian, a rigorous man whose dreams of glory have been blighted by two star-crossed missions. Walt Womack, the steady, unflappable leader of the training team that prepares Lucy for her first shuttle flight.

Lucy has devoted years of intense and focused effort to win her place on a mission, but as her lifelong dream of flying in space comes true, her familiar world appears to be falling apart around her. Her marriage is deteriorating. Her son’s asthma is growing more serious. Her relationship with Walt Womack is becoming dangerously intimate. And when at last she is in space, 240 miles above the earth, and an accident renders the world she left behind appallingly distant—perhaps unreachable—her spirit is tested in gripping and unexpected ways.

In The Gates of the Alamo, Stephen Harrigan’s narrative authority brought a vanished nineteenth-century Texas to vibrant life. In Challenger Park, he does the same with the world of space flight, bringing us up close to the lives—the risks, the friendships, the rituals, the training—of the astronauts and the people who work with them. Harrigan has written an exciting—indeed a thrilling—novel about the contrary pulls of home and adventure, reality and dreams, and the unimaginable experience, the joys and terrors and revelations, of space flight itself.

About The Author

Stephen Harrigan is the author of three previous novels, Aransas, Jacob’s Well, and The Gates of the Alamo. His nonfiction books include Water and Light: A Diver’s Journey to a Coral Reef and the essay collections A Natural State and Comanche Midnight. He is a longtime writer for Texas Monthly, and his articles have appeared in many other magazines. He lives in Austin, Texas.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ron on December 01, 2013

I was born the year an American first traveled into space, and I grew up calculating everybody's coolness by how close they were to NASA. My mother had been Alan Shepard's daughter's synchronized swimming coach (middling cool), but my father worked on the systems leading up to the Apollo program, wh......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on March 28, 2010

Challenger Park. Stephen Harrigan. 2006. Alfred A. Knopf. 397 pages. Challenger Park by Stephen Harrigan is an AMAZING novel about a woman astronaut named Lucy Kincheloe as she prepares for her first space mission. Lucy is a mother of two children and married to another astronaut, Brian, whose ego th......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on May 30, 2016

When reading the description of this novel, I was excited to see a fictional account of an astronaut in the days of the Space Shuttle program. I'd say that about 1/3 of the novel (that may be generous) is packed with an interesting story of mission training, launch and coping with several malfunctio......more

Goodreads review by Adam on November 25, 2009

I was drawn to this because it takes place where I grew up. That also is pretty much the only reason it gets two stars. It is pretty cool to read a book that is based on a place you spend 20 years living in, especially when it is as unheralded as Clear Lake, TX. It was also an interesting insight in......more

Goodreads review by Kelly on February 08, 2018

I was surprised by this book. Hidden in a box among well known novels by some big names, was this Harrigan novel. The beginning started a little slow when Lucy was home with the kids, waiting for Brian to return to Earth. Her frustrations and resentments against her husband urged her toward the poor......more