Will I love The Movement of Stars?

Maria Mitchell, raised as a Nantucket Quaker, was the first woman to discover and name a new comet, no easy task in the 1840s when women were not meant to study astronomy, let alone when her only instrument was a small telescope on an island roof. Brill takes artistic license with Mitchell’s story, adding nuance and detail likely outside the scope of her research, and delivers a riveting tale of a woman determined to live her dreams, no matter how high the barriers to achieving them.  

Read one page of this gorgeous novel and be transported to the streets and sand dunes of 19th-century Quaker Nantucket back when it was still a whaling town. The Movement of Stars is a brilliantly researched work of historical fiction that explores timeless themes: ambition, love, women’s rights, closed-faith communities, and race. I fell in love with the quiet protagonist, Hannah Price, who charts her own course in this unlikely love story.