The Trajectory of Dreams

by Nicole Wolverton

Overview

For Lela White, a Houston sleep lab technician, sleep doesn't come easy-there's a price to be paid for a poor night's sleep, and she's the judge, jury, and executioner. Everyone around Lela considers her a private woman with a passion for her lab work. But nighttime reveals her for what she is: a woman on a critical secret mission. Lela lives in the grip of a mental disorder that compels her to break into astronauts' homes to ensure they can sleep well and believes that by doing so, she keeps the revitalized U.S. space program safe from fatal accidents. What began at the age of ten when her mother confessed to blowing up the space shuttle has evolved into Lela's life's work. She dreads the day when an astronaut doesn't pass her testing, but she's prepared to kill for the greater good. When Zory Korchagin, a Russian cosmonaut on loan to the U.S. shuttle program, finds himself drawn to Lela, he puts her carefully-constructed world at risk of an explosion as surely as he does his own upcoming launch. As Lela's universe unravels, no one is safe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938463440
Publisher:	Bitingduck Press
Publication date:	03/01/2013
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Nicole Wolverton is the author of the psychological thriller The Trajectory of Dreams (March 2013, Bitingduck Press). Her short fiction has appeared in Black Heart Magazine, The Molotov Cocktail, and Penduline, among others. She writes adult and young adult fiction. She lives in the Philadelphia area with her husband, two cats, and a dog. She is a freelance writer and editor, and she enjoys running and outrigger canoeing.

Editorial Reviews

Lela White is an insomniac whose tragic history has left her obsessed with astronauts. Believing sleep deprivation leads to launch accidents, she breaks into the bedrooms of astronauts to monitor them and, if necessary for the safety of the space program, kill those who don’t sleep soundly. Annoying co-worker Trina Shook insists on moving in with Lela after a tornado damages Trina’s house, and when Lela becomes entangled with visiting Russian cosmonaut Zory Korchagin, these two relationships accelerate her madness. Convinced of her righteousness, she is blind to any hint that she herself is the wrong note in her world until it is far too late. Wolverton has taken some liberties with details of the space program, but the primary fantastic elements are the symptoms of Lela’s increasingly dubious grasp on reality; this work is less horror or fantasy than a skillful mainstream examination of a psychotic woman’s final descent into insanity. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"The Trajectory of Dreams is unsettling, beautifully written, and truly original. In Lela White, Nicole Wolverton has created one of the most haunting characters in contemporary fiction. This is a remarkable debut." — Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Lola Quartet, The Singer's Gun, and Last Night in Montreal


"This novel is a free dive into the bottomless ocean of insanity. With every chapter, every kick of the fins, you're sucked in deeper as the darkness mounts and the pressure builds. And like the ocean, The Trajectory of Dreams gives up its secrets grudgingly, so you'll continually be stunned as the protagonist, Lela, falls to her inevitable implosion." — Mike Mullin, author of Ashfall and Ashen Winter

From the Publisher