Mary Doria Russell was born in suburban Chicago in 1950. Her mother was a Navy nurse and her father was a Marine Corps drill sergeant. She studied social anthropology at Northeastern University in Boston, and biological anthropology at the University of Michigan. Dr. Russell taught human gross anatomy at Case Western Reserve University in the 1980s, but left Academe to write. She lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband and son. |
The Sparrow
by Mary Doria Russell.
In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet which will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it will lead them to question the meaning of being "human." When the lone survivor of the expedition, Emilio Sandoz, returns to Earth in 2059, he will try to explain what went wrong... Words like "provocative" and "compelling" will come to mind as you read this shocking novel about first contact with a race that creates music akin to both poetry and prayer.
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Children of God
by Mary Doria Russell.
The hero of Russell's acclaimed first novel The Sparrow (1996), Father Emilio Sandoz, eventually recovers enough from his mauling on the planet Rakhat to have both the Jesuit father general and the pope pressuring him to return. So he quits the Jesuits. The father general then enlists his nephew, a high-ranking member of the Camorra (the Neapolitan Mafia), as a further persuader: Sandoz returns to Rakhat.
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