Dur­ing a live tele­vi­sion broad­cast on the night of a lunar eclipse, renowned astro­physi­cist Andrew Leland is sud­den­ly lift­ed into the sky by a giant space­craft and tak­en away for all to see. Six years lat­er, he turns up, wan­der­ing in a South Amer­i­can desert, deny­ing ever hav­ing been abduct­ed and dis­ap­pear­ing from the pub­lic eye.

Mean­while, he inspires legions of cultish devo­tees, includ­ing a young physics grad­u­ate stu­dent named Shawn Fer­ris who is obsessed with find­ing out what real­ly hap­pened to him. When Shawn final­ly tracks Leland down, he dis­cov­ers that he’s been on the run for years, con­tin­u­ous­ly hunt­ed by a secret orga­ni­za­tion that has pur­sued him across mul­ti­ple con­ti­nents, deter­mined to force him into reveal­ing what he knows.

Shawn soon joins Leland on the run. Though Leland is at first reluc­tant to reveal any­thing, Shawn will soon learn the truth about his abduc­tion, the real rea­son for his return, and will find him­self caught up in a glob­al con­spir­a­cy that puts more than just one plan­et in danger.

Equal parts sci­ence-fic­tion and globe-hop­ping thriller, Joseph Helm­re­ich’s The Return will appeal to fans of both, and to any­one who has ever won­dered… what’s out there?

Vis­it­ing Scribe: Joseph Helmreich

Writ­ing What You Know — Or What You Don’t

The Poet of Thomp­son Street