“ Beautifully written, wonderfully paced, with characters I care about—this book has me on the edge of my seat waiting for the second in this trilogy to see what happens next. ” — C armen Acevedo Butcher, PhD, poet and award-winning translator of The Cloud of Unknowing, Practice of the Presence by Brother Lawrence, and Hildegard of Bingen.   It's 2056 and international oligarchs have pushed the world to the precipice of ecological, economic, and nuclear catastrophe. But two philanthropists have teamed up to establish a long-term colony on Mars.   Could this daring outpost be the next chapter in the story of the human race? Assembling a crack team of experts including scientists, engineers and ecologists, the colony begins to establish a viable outpost on our nearest planet. But the team quickly run into problems as they bear the responsibility of creating a new humanity. Can they work out what has gone wrong before it's too late? And will the passengers of the last voyage from Earth bring what's needed for this fledging community to flourish? This first volume in a thrilling new trilogy from Brian McLaren, explores what it means to be human and what would we choose to bring with us or leave behind, if we were to start all over again.