The Sparrow By Mary Doria Russell 〈NEWEST〉

But Father Candotti, after a long pause, says, “You were out of your mind. You were starving. You were tortured beyond endurance. That is not a sin. That is a wound.”

And then Emilio confesses the one thing he has never told anyone. At the very end, when he was alone, starving, and dying on Rakhat, a Jana’ata child found him. The child—innocent, curious, not yet hardened into the ways of its people—offered Emilio a piece of fruit. It was a gesture of pure, unthinking kindness. the sparrow by mary doria russell

The Society of Jesus, ever the explorer of frontiers, saw a mission. They secretly financed an expedition. Emilio would not go alone. He gathered a family of kindred spirits: Anne and George Edwards, the married scientists who first detected the signal; Jimmy Quinn, a brilliant but tormented engineer; Sofia Mendes, a fierce and wounded computer expert; Marc Robichaux, a veteran physician; and D.W. Yarbrough, a young, earnest technician. But Father Candotti, after a long pause, says,