The team of Jesuit priests and scientists had left in 2021. God may know that a sparrow falls, but the sparrow falls just the same. He has doubts about what it all means and what it says about God and his plan. But his hold on it is never quite secure. As his hands become better able to grasp a coffee mug, he becomes better able to grab onto the truth of what happened to him. He gives official testimony and reports to his superior, but he’s reluctant, fearful, haunted, broken. He shares with the priests who are taking care of him, part confessor and part jury. In The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell tells Emilio’s story as he recovers it, gradually. Reports from the UN consortium that followed the Jesuit team have led the world to consider Emilio not just a failure but a pariah. His hands have been surgically mutilated much of the skin of his palms has been removed, giving his fingers an elongated appearance and making it impossible for him to use his hands. He is mentally and physically traumatized. Father Emilio Sandoz has just returned to Earth, the lone survivor of a mission to Alpha Centauri to find the aliens whose music was the first clear evidence of life on another planet.
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