Bewilderment by Richard Powers

This novel chronicles the relationship of astrobiologist, Theo, and his 9 year-old-son, Robin. After the tragic loss of Theo’s wife and Robin’s mother, he searches for life and love elsewhere in the cosmos and passes on his passion for planets real and imagined to his son, who struggles to fit in or to make sense of what’s happening in his own life and in the larger world. More than that, this book is an elegy to Earth and its inhabitants beset by climate change.