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Smallest lights in the universe : a memoir /

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Toronto : Doubleday Canada, 2020Description: pages cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780385692793
  • 038569279X
  • 9780593172032 (lg. print)
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 520.92 23
Other classification:
  • cci1icc
Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in electronic format.
Summary: Canadian MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager interweaves the story of her search for meaning and solace after losing her first husband to cancer, her unflagging search for an Earth-like exoplanet and her unexpected discovery of new love.
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Holdings
Item type Current library Home library Collection Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Standard Loan Coeur d'Alene Library Large Print Coeur d'Alene Library Book Large.Print B SEAGER SEAGER (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 50610022740034
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Canadian MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager interweaves the story of her search for meaning and solace after losing her first husband to cancer, her unflagging search for an Earth-like exoplanet and her unexpected discovery of new love.

Sara Seager has made it her life's work to peer into the spaces around stars--looking for exoplanets outside our solar system, hoping to find the one-in-a-billion world enough like ours to sustain life. But with the unexpected death of her husband, her life became an empty, lightless space. Suddenly, she was the single mother of two young boys, a widow at forty, clinging to three crumpled pages of instructions her husband had written for things like grocery shopping--things he had done while she did pioneering work as a planetary scientist at MIT. She became painfully conscious of her Asperger's, which before losing her husband had felt more like background noise. She felt, for the first time, alone in the universe.

In this probing, invigoratingly honest memoir, Seager tells the story of how, as she stumblingly navigated the world of grief, she also kept looking for other worlds. She continues to develop groundbreaking projects, such as the Starshade, a sunflower-shaped instrument that, when launched into space, unfurls itself so as to block planet-obscuring starlight, and she takes solace in the alien beauty of exoplanets. At the same time, she discovers what feels every bit as wondrous: other people, reaching out across the space of her grief. Among them are the Widows of Concord, a group of women offering consolation and advice, and her beloved sons, Max and Alex. Most unexpected of all, there is another kind of one-in-a-billion match with an amateur astronomer. Equally attuned to the wonders of deep space and human connection, The Smallest Lights in the Universe is its own light in the dark.

Canadian MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager interweaves the story of her search for meaning and solace after losing her first husband to cancer, her unflagging search for an Earth-like exoplanet and her unexpected discovery of new love.

Issued also in electronic format.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

CHAPTER 1 A Stargazer Is Born I was ten years old when I first really saw the stars. I was mostly a city kid, so I didn't often experience true darkness. The streets of Toronto were my universe. My parents had split up when I was very young, and my brother, sister, and I spent a lot of time on our own, riding subways, exploring alleys. Sometimes we had babysitters barely older than we were. One of them, a boy named Tom, asked my father to take all of us camping. Camping wasn't my father's idea of a good time. Canadians escape to "cottage country" as often as they can, snaking out of the city in great lines of weekend traffic, aiming for some sacred slice of lake and trees. Dr. David Seager was British, and he often wore a tie on weekends; for him, sleeping in the woods was something that animals did. But Tom must have made a pretty good case, because the next thing I knew, we were on our way north. We went to a provincial park called Bon Echo, carved out of a small pocket of Ontario, three or four hours from Toronto. Bon Echo includes a string of beautiful lakes, almost black against the green of the trees. There are white beaches and pink granite cliffs--­perfect for jumping off into the cool water, after climbing as high as you dare--­and thick red beds of pine needles on the forest floor. Bon Echo was the prettiest place I'd ever been. Maybe it was the absence of city sounds that made it hard for me to sleep. I was in a tent with my siblings. We had set up a little suitcase between us like a nightstand. (As usual, we had been left to our own devices, this time to pack. We had no idea that campers generally don't bring suitcases.) My brother and sister were making the soft noises that sleeping children make. Jeremy was the oldest and tall for his age. He had only a year on me, but it was a crucial year, and he usually ended up in charge, dictating our daily activities from his great height. Julia was the youngest, beautiful and boisterous with a perpetual light in her eyes. She was everybody's favorite. I occupied the middle in every sense, small and silent. I was the dark one. Jeremy and Julia have blond hair and blue eyes; I have brown hair and hazel eyes. My eyes were also the only ones open that night. I unzipped the tent's flap and ducked out into the dark. I wandered just far enough away to clear the last of the trees. That's when I looked up. My heart stopped. All these years later, I can still remember that feeling in my chest. It was a moonless night, and there were so many stars--­hundreds, perhaps thousands--­over my head. I wondered how such beauty could exist, and I wondered, too, why nobody had ever told me about it. I must have been the first person to see the night sky. I must have been the first person in human history who had braved her way outside and looked up. Otherwise the stars would have been something that people talked about, something that children were shown as soon as we could open our eyes. I stood and stared for what felt like hours but was probably seconds, a little girl who understood how to navigate the chaos of a big city and a broken home, but who now had been given her first glimpse of real mystery. I was overwhelmed by what felt like too much light, too much knowledge to take in all at once. I ran back to the tent, curled up beside my sleeping sister, and tried to be just ten years old again, listening to the sweet sound of her breathing. ● My father lived outside Toronto, in a series of neat and orderly apartments and bungalows. My mother lived in a former rooming house, in what was a battered part of town called the South Annex, with my stepfather, piles of old newspapers, and an army of cats named after literary characters. She was a writer, a poet. I never became close with children who weren't related to me, so I didn't know how different our family was. When I'm feeling generous I tell myself that we were lucky to live without any of the usual constraints imposed by more conventional upbringings. I learned to believe that freedom is precious however it's given to you, and our almost impossible freedom helped make us who we are today: Jeremy is a nurse; Julia is a harpist; I'm an astrophysicist. But when I reflect on the realities of our young lives, I can hardly believe we survived, especially when I look at my boys at the same age. We were cubs, turned out to run with the bears. When we first lived in the Annex, we attended a Montessori school far outside town, near the distant house we'd called home before my mother and father separated. I don't know why we stayed in the same school after our move into the city, but our commute was over an hour each way, including trips on two buses and the subway, with long waits at busy stations and platforms in between. Jeremy was maybe eight at the time, which would make me seven and Julia five. After a few weeks of trial runs, we made that trip every day on our own. Jeremy would save up a pocketful of coins until he had enough to buy a bag of sour-­cream-­and-­onion chips, which we would carefully share. Just the smell of those chips today puts me back on those buses and subways. We filled time by reading newspapers--­discarded by adults, or stolen out of the newspaper box after somebody bought one, before the door could slam shut--­which I suppose was a positive. We were what modern educators would call "advanced." One day my sister fell into a muddy puddle at the bus stop that marked the start of our long journey home. After a tearful ride, a woman saw Julia still crying at the subway station and brought her into the women's washroom to clean her up. She took forever, and I shuttled back and forth giving updates to my brother, who stood worried sentry outside. I try to imagine that scenario now--­a woman finding three kids under eight on their own, one of them crying and covered in mud. I think today, most of the time, the story ends with a call to the police. In our case, it ended with a stranger putting my five-­year-­old sister slightly back together before we boarded the subway into the city. I have memories that left more lasting damage. My stepfather was a monster, the kind of beast who normally lives at the dark heart of a fairy tale. He didn't physically abuse me, but he could be unbelievably cruel, and his mood swings were vicious. I lived in constant fear of setting him off. He and my mother were both still in bed when we left for school, having scratched together our own breakfast, our own lunch. He didn't work, and my mother's writing career wasn't exactly lucrative, either. My father told me he suspected our entire family survived on his child support payments. When my mother and stepfather had a child together, my half sister, money was so tight that I wondered whether six of us were living off child support meant for three. Julia and I had to share our already cluttered room with the baby. She cried all night for months with colic, and she would wake up at dawn for a long time after, my mother ignoring my pleas to cover our east-­facing windows. I was forever getting up to take care of the baby. When I was nine years old, I decided not to walk with Julia to school one morning. (We had left the Montessori at that point, but our new school was still a mile-­long walk away.) She would have been seven. I wanted to walk with one of my few semi-­friends and didn't want my little sister tagging along, so I told her to find her own way. Instead of taking the safer, quieter side streets, she took the main roads. At one especially busy corner, she was confronted by an unstable woman who howled in her face and tried to hit her with her bags. Julia froze and screamed for help. It took a long time for anyone to answer her cries. A real estate agent finally surfaced from a nearby office to rescue her. For days after, teachers at our school would ask me what had happened. "Not sweet Julia!" They were in shock. "You are in so much trouble," my stepfather screamed at me when I got home. I can't remember exactly what he said after that, but these are the words I hear when I close my eyes: You are a bad person. What were you thinking? You are so irresponsible. You are an ungrateful child, and I am furious with you. I should have looked after my sister. But I was also nine years old. That night I was the one who woke up crying. Excerpted from The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir by Sara Seager All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

At the intersection of dreams and science stood a little girl from Ontario, Canada, who, during a camping trip, discovered the wonders of the night sky unobscured by the glare of city lights. Seager (astrophysics & planetary science, MIT) has intertwined her lifelong love of the stars with her personal story of love and loss and renewal. She describes how she channeled her interest in science and nature into a career as an astrophysicist, which in turn sparked her sense of adventure. While pursuing her education, she does research on exoplanets, or those planets outside the solar system. She also meets her future husband, with whom she marries and has two children, and who also shares her passion for the outdoors. After her husband dies unexpectedly from cancer, Seager has to pick up the pieces of her grief and lost love and try to rebuild her life. VERDICT This thoughtful and affecting memoir of navigating life after loss reads like a comforting novel, inspiring others to follow their dreams and never give up on the possibilities of discovery and self-reflection. Readers seeking women's biographies and studies in planetary science will relish this heartfelt story.--Donna Marie Smith, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL

Publishers Weekly Review

Planetary astrophysicist Seager looks back on her life through the lens of her passion for stargazing in this brilliant, emotionally wrought memoir. A socially awkward child, Seager shuttled between divorced parents in 1970s and '80s Toronto. At age 10 on a camping trip, she discovered the stars--"I stood and stared... a little girl who understood how to navigate... a big city and a broken home, but who now had been given her first glimpse of real mystery." A canoe trip in 1994 cemented her relationship with fellow outdoor enthusiast Mike, and during her graduate work at Harvard she researched exoplanets. She joined the faculty of MIT in 2006, and married Mike, with whom she had two sons. She received prestigious science awards and was named chair of a key NASA project; but in 2011 Mike was diagnosed with and soon after died from colon cancer. Seager's fragile balance of career and single motherhood was strengthened by two chance meetings--with a young widow and a fellow stargazer named Charles Darrow. Her life was again reignited with friendship and love, and bolstered when she received the MacArthur Fellowship in 2013. Seager's openhearted prose is clean and exact, and her observations--"We want to be a light in somebody else's sky"--illuminate the human drive to connect with others. This wondrous tale of discovery, loss, and love is both expansive intimate. (Aug.)

Booklist Review

This engaging memoir seamlessly weaves together three narratives. First there's the author's life story as a solitary child, an ultra-focused university student, a happily wedded wife and mother, a grief-stricken young widow, and an ultimate survivor. The second thread follows Seager's impressive career. A celebrated MIT astrophysicist who specializes in exoplanet exploration, Seager is also the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation grant. The third story in Seager's memoir is one of self-discovery: in her forties, Seager was diagnosed with autism. It doesn't matter whether the text is describing a particularly painful social interaction or explaining the mechanics behind a billion-dollar proposal; Seager's writing is unfailingly accessible and compelling. Sometimes the chapters alternate between biographical and scientific developments, other times events are intertwined, but again, readers will remain fully engaged throughout. They'll appreciate Seager's honesty and empathize with her as she describes the agony of watching her husband being consumed by cancer, vents frustration over professional setbacks and snubs, or shares her hard-won victories. This is technical writing at its best, shared by a thoroughly companionable and relatable scientist, writer, and woman. Readers will cheer for the happy ending.Women in Focus: The 19th in 2020

Kirkus Book Review

The memoir of an astrophysicist whose extraordinary accomplishments reflect her exceptional complexity. As a scientist, Seager has achieved considerable renown. She won the prestigious Sackler International Prize in Physics as well as a MacArthur fellowship, and she was named by Time as "one of the twenty-five most influential people in space." Her prominence and how she achieved it would merit a book about her, but her personal struggles fitting in and finding a balance between her work and life are what make this memoir so compelling, even for readers who know little about science. For someone who has devoted so much of her life to exploring the possibility of life on other planets, which she believes is almost a mathematical certainty, it was a more personal discovery--that she was autistic--that made her feel like "I'd been struck by something, a physical impact. So much of my life suddenly made sense." It wasn't until the public's response to an extensive personal profile in the New York Times Magazine that Seager realized that her "feelings of otherness" and her inabilities to connect with others and to feel like she belonged were part of her diagnosis. This book obviously goes much deeper into how she found her vocation after something of a wayward, "vagabond adolescence" in Canada and how she and her husband started a family (two boys, three cats) that eventually felt like "our own solar system"--until his terminal cancer left the author feeling like one of the "rogue planets" to which she had devoted her scientific research. Seager also engagingly explores how a widows' group that she was reluctant to join showed her that she was not alone and how finding her second husband opened a whole new world within her. The interior journey she traces here is as extraordinary as her scientific career. A singular scientist has written a singular account of her life and work. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

SARA SEAGER is an astrophysicist and a professor of physics and planetary science at MIT. She currently chairs NASA's Probe Study Team for the Starshade project. Her research is focused on exoplanets and the search for the first Earth-like twin, and she has introduced many new ideas to the field of exoplanet characterization, including work that led to the first detection of an exoplanet atmosphere. She is from Toronto and now lives with her husband and sons in Concord, Massachusetts.

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