LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME

Three siblings torn apart by their brother's disappearance, father's death, and mother's dementia team up to save an alien world.

Jakob Shao returns to Earth after years away to retrieve a device that's key to saving his alien friend Henry's home world from a species of ravaging marauders. After a stop in Reno, Nevada, Jakob makes his way to the family home in Mountain View, California, where he's reunited with his sisters. Twin Kassie is a divorced, cigarette-smoking psychologist, online role-playing gamer, and caregiver for the siblings' mother, Sofia Aguilar-Shao, who has dementia. Younger sister Evie is a selfie-taking veterinarian tech in Buffalo, New York, whose side hustle involves proving the existence of extraterrestrial life in an effort to locate her missing brother. Shattered by the death of their father, Arnold Shao, as an indirect result of Jakob's disappearance 15 years earlier, the siblings must overcome past hurts and misunderstandings and learn to appreciate one another and work together to determine whether Jakob is suffering from psychotic delusions, is a terrorist on the run from the FBI, or is actually a space soldier on a desperate mission. A rich backstory that explores the Shao family's disparate memories of the night Jakob and Arnold disappeared and a highly satisfying ending add welcome texture.

All the stars for Chen's warmhearted space-travel story.