The Book Of Naomi: A Novel

The Book of Naomi is a feminist science fiction novel with a queer, Jewish protagonist. It is a loose retelling of The Book of Ruth from the Torah set several hundred years in the future, in a universe where human contact with aliens and faster-than-light travel are commonplace, although not without conflict. Naomi Mandelbaum is a human pilot half the galaxy away from her home. When her ship explodes, she teams up with an alien engineer named Ruea to try and get back to Mars. On the way, they battle space pirates, crazy cults, cannibalistic millionaires, and, most frightening of all, their own feelings for each other. The book has an episodic structure, and contains aspects of several genres beyond space-opera style science fiction, including romance, road trip stories, gothic novels, horror, westerns, and dystopian fiction. It asks questions about autonomy in relationships: how much we change for others, how much we cling to our identities, how much we accept others as they are, and how much we ask them to change for us. It also explores how people react to the breakdown of communication, and the meaning and variety of genders and sexualities.