Under Story
Will be published approx. on 1. September 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
512 pages
979-8-217-43406-0 (ISBN)
Description
The New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists returns with a breathtakingly ambitious and unforgettable love story of what it is to live and love in time, and the extraordinary power of second chances.
“We wake up to tomorrow, never yesterday.”
At an isolated research station in Antarctica, biologist Laurel Salter washes dishes for a living ten hours a day, six days a week. She tells no one why she left her career or why her marriage ended. But even in this remote outpost, Laurel cannot outrun her past. When a strange illumination known as the Arc, a highly unusual visual phenomena that defies two-dimensional rendering, draws a group of physicists to McMurdo, Laurel watches in disbelief as her former husband Eli walks across the ice and back into her life.
Whether it is circumstance or fate that has pulled them back together, Laurel and Eli each sense a possibility about the Arc's existence: its glow; the way it seems almost alive. And while Eli is reluctant to test the wild theories circulating around the base, it is Laurel who is willing to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them; to turn back the clock and live their story a second time. But this time, to live it differently.
At once a masterfully intimate yet epic love story that illuminates our world as a balance of opposites and a sweeping odyssey of scientific discovery, Under Story invites us to consider the promise of this life, what might lie beyond it, and how far we would go for more time with the people we love, cementing Chloe Benjamin’s place among our best, and most lasting, storytellers.
“We wake up to tomorrow, never yesterday.”
At an isolated research station in Antarctica, biologist Laurel Salter washes dishes for a living ten hours a day, six days a week. She tells no one why she left her career or why her marriage ended. But even in this remote outpost, Laurel cannot outrun her past. When a strange illumination known as the Arc, a highly unusual visual phenomena that defies two-dimensional rendering, draws a group of physicists to McMurdo, Laurel watches in disbelief as her former husband Eli walks across the ice and back into her life.
Whether it is circumstance or fate that has pulled them back together, Laurel and Eli each sense a possibility about the Arc's existence: its glow; the way it seems almost alive. And while Eli is reluctant to test the wild theories circulating around the base, it is Laurel who is willing to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them; to turn back the clock and live their story a second time. But this time, to live it differently.
At once a masterfully intimate yet epic love story that illuminates our world as a balance of opposites and a sweeping odyssey of scientific discovery, Under Story invites us to consider the promise of this life, what might lie beyond it, and how far we would go for more time with the people we love, cementing Chloe Benjamin’s place among our best, and most lasting, storytellers.
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Chloe Benjamin is the author of The Immortalists, a New York Times bestseller, and The Anatomy of Dreams. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, The Immortalists was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was longlisted for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Originally from San Francisco, CA, Chloe is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives with her husband in San Francisco.