To the Moon and Back

A novel that has the generosity to be many things - bittersweet, thrillingly perceptive, multi-threaded, enormously funny. To the Moon and Back is a wonderful book about a Cherokee Nation woman who, over several decades, brings herself to reckon with the true price of her at-any-cost ambition to become an astronaut; and a powerful story about the mixture of combativeness, compromise and love that forms the heart of a family.

Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time

To the Moon and Back is a passionate and compulsively readable novel. Dare I say, a stellar debut.

Margot Livesey, author of The Road to Belhaven

Eliana Ramage's To the Moon and Back is a captivating debut about family, queer identity, love, career and heritage. This novel has something for everyone.

De'Shawn Charles Winslow, author of In West Mills

To the Moon and Back is a singular, sonorous, wholehearted novel, one I wanted to devour and savor at once. Eliana Ramage is a dynamite writer — every sentence positively shimmers.

Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had and Same As It Ever Was

Ramage will break your heart and take you to the stars. From painfully accurate depictions of adolescence, to effortless jumps through time and space – I loved it all.

Kiley Reid, author of Such A Fun Age

To The Moon and Back simply soars. Eliana Ramage has given us a brilliant, faceted, warm-hearted novel, with characters to love and truly root for, and pages that seem to turn themselves.

Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of the National Book Award Finalist All This Could Be Different

This author is as ambitious as her protagonist: there are three novels worth of material here, all good. The moon or bust!

Kirkus Reviews

A story of decisions; right, wrong and everything in between, To the Moon and Back explores love and ambition and all its complicated messiness. With characters so perfectly rendered that you’ll want to hug them or give them a shake, Eliana Ramage explores what it means to belong in this immersive and exciting debut.

Amanda Peters, author of The Berry Pickers

A soaring masterpiece that mixes the terror, care, betrayal, and death-defying love of family with deliciously abject lesbian drama and the beautifully self-destructive doggedness of possessing a singular dream. Every character in this novel will stay with you forever. I love this book.

Casey Plett, author of A Dream of a Woman

Any story about somebody who wants to be an astronaut is bound to get my attention, but Ramage’s debut is a special one. It’s epic in scope, jumping across several decades and hopping the globe, but it never loses sight of the family story at its core and the Indigenous identities of its heroine Steph and her nearest and dearest. It’s a family novel, it’s an ambition novel, it is a novel that (you guessed it) shoots for the moon and makes it back safely to boot.

LitHub Most Anticipated

Ambitious and big-hearted

the Millions

Ramage's incandescent debut novel is the story of Steph Harper, who has a singular focus, to become the first Cherokee astronaut… Wondrous and deeply moving, Ramage's first outing explores ambition, sexuality, and familial bonds with sensitivity and piercing insight. Not to be missed.

Booklist, starred review

A powerful, resonant debut novel.

People Magazine

A sprawling, multi-generational saga on kinship, queer identity and ambition... big in ambition, bold, funny

Jhalak Review

An epic, enthralling and deeply humane novel of family bonds, belonging and the relentless pursuit of one's dream, that will make you laugh and cry along the way. Eliana Ramage is a formidable talent, and writes with so much heart and hope: I loved it.

Ceclie Pin, author of Wandering Souls