Grounded Space: 2

Five years after the night that took Iona's brother from the sky, Michael is twenty-three and has built half a town with his own hands. He has a workshop, an apprentice, and a family that is not his by blood.Then the sea leaves a man on the tideline, carrying a brass key and a note in the handwriting of a woman who has been dead five years. The note is addressed to Michael.What the key opens is six days east, in a stone house in the desert. What waits there is a ledger of names, and some of them belong to people Michael passes on the road every morning. By the end of the week he understands that for five years he has been his mother's cover, and that the work of his hands was the reason no one ever thought to look.A story of inheritance, chosen family, and the names a good man cannot unread. Book Two of the Falling Stars trilogy.**Cover art: Hilltop (1926) by Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966); in the public domain**