Don’t get me wrong, and without giving too much away, the story is one of loss, unimaginable loss, over and over again and yet you meet characters, specifically, Rachel, who live through those losses and still manage to not only to survive but make lives for themselves. You will cry (at least I did), you may get angry but you will also smile and be uplifted.
The author, Alan Brennert, tells the story using a third person narrative which maybe doesn’t let us know any specific character, again especially Rachel, as well as we would like but gives us enriching glimpses into many perspectives on the lives of not only the ill but those that live with them. This leads to a little more exposition than I normally would like but I found the story so engrossing that I didn’t mind this at all. As a matter of fact, I found it so compelling that at moments I put down the book to do a bit of “Googling” to find out more about the actual history of the colony and its occupants.
In the end, I think the author’s point, summed up nicely by Sister Catherine comes through, “I’ve come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death… is the true measure of the Divine within us.” When I’m in my right mind, I couldn’t agree more.