The Radiant Dark

On the night of February 3, 1980, mysterious flashes appear near Saturn, drawing global attention. Carol Girard, an exhausted new mother living in New York's Adirondack Mountains, does not see them. Her son, Michael, arrived 26 days early, and she is consumed by the demands of caring for him, plagued by phantom crying, intrusive anxiety, and surges of anger she cannot control. Radio telescopes soon detect a continuous signal from the star Ross 128, 11 light-years away. Dr. Patricia Frey and her team decode the signal, revealing a bitmap image of an alien star system. President Carter addresses the nation: Intelligent extraterrestrial life exists in the Ross 128 system. The beings are named the Rossians, and their signal is called the Beacon.

Carol watches the address in a daze. Virgo, her astrological sign, is the constellation where Ross 128 resides, and Michael's due date was the night of the flashes. She feels a pulse of personal connection but is too overwhelmed to hold onto it. She drops Michael in shock during the broadcast, and the guilt haunts her. Her marriage to Jake, a carpenter she married for stability rather than passion, continues to deteriorate. Carol's childhood was difficult: Her mother, Anna, was controlling and sometimes physically abusive, dying of breast cancer when Carol was 17. Her sister, Donna, fled to New York City after high school, leaving Carol behind with their father, who had an alcohol addiction.

Carol discovers she is pregnant again, conceived the night of the Beacon announcement. Their daughter, Rosanna, is born three days before Christmas. Carol and Jake name her, blending the star system's name with Carol's late mother's. Unlike with Michael, Carol feels an instant bond with the baby. The International Interstellar Communications Organization (IICO) formulates a mathematical reply to the Beacon, transmitted from the Arecibo Observatory on New Year's Day 1982. Carol misses the live broadcast because her children demand her attention.

Over the next decade, Carol devotes herself to motherhood while the world advances in response to the Rossians. By 1993, her discontent resurfaces. Driven by a sense of wasted potential and a fear of dying young like her mother, who died at 41, Carol tells Jake she wants a divorce. He agrees but refuses to leave the house. When Carol discovers Jake confided in Laura Kadner, who witnessed Carol being hit by her mother as a child, she announces the divorce to the children. Rosanna, now 12 and called Ro, is devastated. Michael, quiet and artistic, silently positions himself between his parents.

In mid-July, Carol escalates the standoff by moving Jake's belongings to the driveway. She slaps Jake; he punches the door beside her head. Michael, terrified, drags his mother to her car, and she drives south to Donna's apartment. The children remain with their father. Carol lives in her car for weeks before finding low-paying jobs on Long Island. She calls constantly, leaning on the children emotionally, especially Ro, who learns to suppress her own feelings to manage her mother's distress.

Years pass. Ro excels in school and earns admission to Yale. Michael graduates and departs on a cross-country road trip, eventually settling in the Pacific Northwest. Carol meets Theodore, a charismatic man who runs a local storefront for Universalism, a belief system founded by Hector Thomas that teaches light connects all beings. Carol marries Theodore and begins speaking publicly about her connection to the Beacon, embellishing her story over time. Theodore shares a closely guarded belief: Hector Thomas was a Rossian in a previous life, his soul having traveled to Earth on light.

The night of Ro's high school graduation, Ro drives her best friend, Elaine Kadner, to a party. Elaine gets drunk, uses cocaine, and falls over a stairwell railing to her death. Ro is consumed by guilt. The Beacon, which had gone silent earlier that year after 18 years of continuous transmission, resumes, and the signal's return helps pull Ro from her grief enough to attend Yale.

At Yale, Ro bonds with her roommate Hannah and gradually processes Elaine's death. She excels academically, entering a PhD program in astronomy at the University of Arizona. In 2005, a new Rossian transmission arrives containing a modified star chart, a previously unknown planet beyond Pluto, and a catalog of over 2,000 star systems. Ro publishes the first interpretation: The Rossians are telling humanity that while organic compounds are common, technologically advanced civilizations are extraordinarily rare. Only Earth and Ross 128 b, the Rossians' homeworld, are known to harbor them.

Anti-communication extremists called the Silencers launch coordinated attacks on observatories and on Hector Thomas himself. Carol throws herself at the attacker, saving Hector's life and cementing her status within Universalism. Patricia Frey, now working for the aerospace company Paradox, recruits Ro for the Paradox Exoplanet Habitability Team (PEHT), tasked with identifying habitable exoplanets. Ro begins dating Charlie Zambrano, an aspiring writer, and they marry in 2007. On their wedding day, Frey secretly arranges an unauthorized transmission to Ross 128: an English primer and an encyclopedia of human knowledge.

In 2018, Ro gives birth to her daughter Lydia and experiences severe postpartum depression. Frey's unauthorized transmission is discovered, and she retires; Ro is named PEHT's new director. Carol and Theodore visit to meet Lydia. On the final evening, Theodore refuses to hand the baby back, trying to pressure Ro into contacting Frey about sending a Universalist message to Ross 128. In the struggle, Lydia falls and strikes her head on a granite countertop. She survives with stitches and a scar. Ro orders Theodore out and tells Carol their relationship is over unless Carol leaves him.

Carol defends Theodore, and the rift solidifies into estrangement. Michael, drawing on insights from therapy, gently suggests to Carol that Theodore's ambition has led him astray. His words reach Carol, and she eventually leaves Theodore, moving in with Donna. Theodore dies a few years later without reconciling with Carol.

PEHT's interstellar probe Shu explodes during launch, and Paradox declines to fund a replacement, dissolving the team. Ro spends years in quiet intellectual pursuit. Patricia Frey dies of a brain aneurysm, and Ro delivers her eulogy. At the funeral of Donna's husband Jonah, Carol and Ro share a cautious exchange, their first in years. Lydia asks to send a drawing to her grandmother, and Ro allows limited reconnection.

In 2034, a new Rossian transmission arrives containing written English, a Rossian-English translation key, and schematics for a spacecraft launched toward Earth in 1982, traveling at 10 percent the speed of light with an estimated arrival around 2092. Ro shares the news with 16-year-old Lydia, recognizing that while she herself will likely not live to see the Rossians arrive, her daughter might.

An epilogue set in 2138 follows Mica Zambrano-Tamura, Ro's great-granddaughter, a 26-year-old geologist born on Earth's moon. Mica's best friend is Drull, a Rossian born in the solar system after the ship Gentle Greeting arrived decades earlier. Among her deceased mother's belongings, Mica finds a signed copy of Frey's book inscribed to "Ro" and an old photograph of a family at a wedding. She does not know who they are but resolves to find out, connecting the novel's opening generations to a future in which humanity and the Rossians coexist.