A novel of ambition and obsession centered on the race to discover Pluto in 1930, pitting an untrained Kansas farm boy against the greatest minds of Harvard at the run-down Lowell Observatory in Arizona In 1928, the boy who will discover Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh, is on the family farm, grinding a lens for his own telescope under the immense Kansas sky. In Flagstaff, Arizona, the staff of Lowell Observatory is about to resume the late Percival Lowell's interrupted search for Planet X. Meanwhile, the immensely rich heir to a chemical fortune has decided to go west to hunt for dinosaurs and in Cambridge, Massachussetts, the most beautiful girl in America is going slowly insane while her ex-heavyweight champion boyfriend stands by helplessly, desperate to do anything to keep her. Inspired by the true story of Tombaugh and set in the last gin-soaked months of the flapper era, Percival's Planet tells the story of the intertwining lives of half a dozen dreamers, schemers, and madmen. Following Tombaugh's unlikely path from son of a farmer to discoverer of a planet, the novel touches on insanity, mathematics, music, astrophysics, boxing, dinosaur hunting, shipwrecks—and what happens when the greatest romance of your life is also the source of your life's greatest sorrow. Percival's Planet calculates the moral dimensions of scientific investigation, noted the Washington Post . It is this "breadth of Byers's field of vision [that] is a saving grace." If Byers's technical descriptions and research slowed down a few critics, they agreed that his wide scope--he tells many stories, with his characters exhibiting all-too-human motives and emotions--is his greatest success. A few felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of subplots, and the Washington Post thought that Byers's contemplative prose dulled an otherwise exciting tale. However, Byers' tale should be universally appealing--"just an endearing story of underdogs, both the ragtag crew of astronomers and the tiny celestial body they're hoping to find" ( Entertainment Weekly ). *Starred Review* To many astronomers of the early twentieth century, Percival Lowell was more crackpot than serious scientist, but his meticulous notes and his Arizona observatory made it possible for Kansas-bred Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto in 1930. This latest novel by the author of Long for This World (2003) traces the painstaking search for what, in the years before Pluto’s discovery, Lowell’s astronomical heirs called Planet X. In fascinating, if occasionally overwhelming, scientific detail, Byers describes primitive lens-making, long-hand mathematical calculations, painstaking photographic sessions, and 12-hour days measuring celestial movement with a “comparator.” However, it’s the gravitational force between the characters, their weaknesses, and their resolve that renders this voyage of discovery fresh and astonishing. Brilliant observations about human nature—obsessiveness, laziness, duplicity, and violence, but also creativity, faithfulness, integrity, selflessness, and courage—are all illustrated by unique yet believable, likable characters. Two camps of scientists—paleontologists and astronomers—seek the secrets of the earth and sky while rushing, in their personal relationships, headlong toward disaster. Encompassing aspects of Jane Smiley’s bleak outlook in Private Life (2010), the political machinations surrounding Galileo’s theories in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Galileo’s Dream (2009), and the wry humor and naive joy of Miles in Jim Lynch’s The Highest Tide (2005), this insightful, witty novel grabs the heart and tickles the mind. --Jen Baker “What makes ‘Percival’s Planet’ so irresistible is a more down-to-earth human focus brought to the story through fictional characters and events. Byers has the rare ability to break a reader’s heart practically from the moment each new character is introduced.” - Oregonlive.com “The power of Byers’ writing will keep readers turning pages. . . . Byers has a gift for capturing the exhilaration of discover. The depth and precision of his descriptions bring his striving, searching characters fully into focus” -Dallas News   “Byers’s writing, always lyrical, shimmers and trembles and breaks our hearts. ‘Percival’s Planet’ a story of earth, sky and bones, of privilege and struggle, of grave and beautiful people is. . . deserving of our admiration and awe.” - Boston Globe “Faultless storytelling. A gloriously expansive view of Depression-era America.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred) “Michael Byers has written an historical novel about a famous scientist and the race to solve one of the nineteenth century's greatest unsolved mysteries. The author has done a wonderful job of letting readers follow young Clyde Tombaugh as he creates an opportunity for himself to escape from Kansas, pursue his dream of becoming an astronomer, and demonstrate his stubborn, farmboy's stick-to-it work ethic that enabled him to accomplish what the more experienced