Excerpt from Gateway to the Moon by Mary Morris, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Miguel doesn't like his position so he moves the telescope to the right until he is on firmer ground. Carefully he sweeps the skies as he looks for Arcturus in the constellation of Boötes. It is one of the brightest stars. He feels certain that Arcturus has planets in its orbit, and he's sure that those planets must have moons. The universe interests him. He doesn't know why. Perhaps it's because each night when he steps out of his mother's trailer and stares at the sky, he wonders if there isn't a better life for him somewhere out there. When he was younger, he'd go outside to get away from his parents' fighting. He spent months trying to invent a device that would contact a spacecraft to come and get him. In his early teens he went out to sneak a smoke. But since juvie he just does it to watch.

Miguel never cared that much about the earth sciences, but he cares about space. The first time he gazed through a lens, he saw a crater on the moon the size of Texas. He learned that the Earth could slip through the gap between the rings of Saturn. That is how big they are. His science teacher, Mr. Garcia, taught him to ask questions. Why is it that a supernova is in the same shape as a snail? Why does nature repeat its patterns? He ponders the three-­body problem, trying to understand what keeps the Earth in its orbit. How is it that we keep spinning at all?

For years he wanted his own telescope but knew he'd never be able to afford it. Then last year Mr. Garcia gave him a gift: a membership to the Amateur Astronomers of America. In one of its newsletters he read about a man named John Dobson who taught people how to build their own telescopes from scratch and at almost no cost. In the Santa Fe Public Library, Miguel found a book by Dobson, in which he learned the intricacies of magnification.

He began with the mirror. He spent weeks grinding it down, polishing it, getting the shape just right. In flea markets and pawnshops he scavenged lenses from an old pair of 7/35 binoculars and these he used for his eyepiece. Then he built his own sixteen-­inch scope with an eight-­inch focal length that is strong enough to see galaxies and star clusters that are light-­years away. The telescope cost him seven dollars to make and he can see Cassiopeia and Andromeda, her daughter. He can see Perseus. He can even see Algol, the evil winking eye in the center of Medusa's head in the constellation Perseus. When he presented the telescope to his teacher, Mr. Garcia was amazed at its strength.

Miguel pans along the outer ridges of his own galaxy. The ground is too rocky and he can't get the scope stable so he moves over a few graves. At least he assumes they are graves. Mostly there are grassy mounds and broken headstones with their strange writing that nobody can decipher. No one has been buried in this cemetery for at least a hundred years. That's what his mother tells him. In fact no one in the town remembers the last time anyone was buried here. No one comes to tend the graves. When he was younger, he came here on dares to see who could mingle longer with the ghosts. Then he came with his girlfriend because it was a good place to slip his hand under her shirt and run it along her smooth, warm skin. But since he joined the Amateur Astronomers of America, he's been trying to get better purchase on the sky.

He folds up his telescope. Though he is reluctant to leave this crystal night behind, it's Friday and his mother expects him home. He makes his way down the hill toward the lights. When he gets to Roybal's General Store, he'll give her a call. As he was heading out that evening, she asked him to pick up milk. It is one of the things that makes Miguel crazy. She's always asking him to do something. They can't have a conversation without her saying "Would you mind fixing this?" or "Will you pick this up after school?" Someday this will drive him away.

Excerpted from Gateway to the Moon by Mary Morris. Copyright © 2018 by Mary Morris. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.