Thomas Mallon’s (1951- ) Aurora Seven (1991) is set on May 24, 1962, the date on which astronaut Scott Carpenter orbited Earth three times, narrowly escaping disaster before landing safely in the Pacific Ocean. The central figure in the novel is 11-year-old Gregory Noonan, living with his parents in a Westchester County suburb. He is deeply absorbed by the space program; as a result, he becomes alienated from his father, a glove salesman. In addition to Gregory and his parents, the supporting cast includes, among others, a Mary McCarthy-esque writer and intellectual, a Catholic priest having difficulty controlling his sexual feelings, a young Puerto Rican man interviewing for a job as an elevator operator, and a New York City cab driver--all of them are orbiting the city, looking for a safe landing. Interpolated into the accounts of the characters are excerpts from the text of air-ground voice communications among Carpenter, the Control Center at Cape Canaveral, and the various tracking stations he was in touch with. Also true to life are the words of Walter Cronkite’s reporting of the flight for CBS, preserved at the Museum of Broadcasting in New York.

After spending the morning in school, surreptitiously listening to radio reports of the flight, Gregory impulsively plays hooky at lunchtime and hops a train to New York to join the crowd watching the television coverage of the event on the giant monitors in Grand Central Station. His mother becomes alarmed when she spots him on television among the crowd. His father, who works in the Grand Central area, also happens to be among the crowd, but the two do not meet. After the landing, Gregory sets out for his father’s workplace. On the way, he has a near-fatal mishap, involving the cab driver, the novelist, and the young man, leading to a reunion with his father. The confluence of his and Carpenter’s narrow escapes reinforces the boy’s conviction that there is a design at work in human history, however obscure and clouded.

Gregory had pondered the question of history’s design earlier in the day; Participating in a school rehearsal of a pageant about the Civil War, he objects to the fact that his teacher has Union and Confederate soldiers joining in a dance during the war. His teacher invokes the phrase “historical license” by way of explanation. “History is history,” thinks Gregory. “If you play with it, it is no longer true. Any tampering could make the world veer off its course . . . keeping it from going where it is supposed to be going, which eventually . . . is back in the palm of God, a small sphere, returning, like a baseball to the pitcher.” The small sphere returning to its home is a good description of the plot as a whole: the return of the satellite, the reconciliation of the boy and his father, and the great globe itself, spinning off course regularly, courting extinction, but eventually making its way back, at least for the time being.

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