On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden (review)

In this graphic novel, Mia reports for duty aboard a spaceship whose small crew specializes in restoring decrepit buildings, and as they work on their current project—the ancient church whose history hints at a congregation of cult members—Mia gets to know her new workmates. Alma and Charlotte act as captains; Alma's niece, Jules, is a rowdy, open-hearted, and big-mouthed agemate for Mia; Elliot, the resident techie, is the mute, non-binary kid with a mystery past. As Mia and Jules go adventuring in an off-limits work zone, the book slips into a flashback to five years earlier and Mia's arrival at a girls' boarding school, where she falls in love with Grace and falls afoul of a clique of bullies. Fate tore Mia and Grace apart during their boarding-school days, but now there's a chance for them to reconnect, as Mia convinces her workmates to steer their ship to Grace's home, The Staircase, which lies at the far edge of space. Walden's complex work creates both an extraordinary vision of an undefined cosmos, in which spacecrafts navigate among free-floating buildings and chunks of habitable astro-debris, and an equally extraordinary world (or corner of that cosmos?) populated exclusively by women—or, with a respectful nod to Elliot—not by men. The genre is most identifiably sci-fi, but the extraterrestrial setting is less directed toward exploring the future than toward rattling YA literary conventions to rethink mystery, adventure, and romance genres beyond the constriction of binary gender tropes. Walden scatters clues that draw present and flashback plots together more to delight than bedevil readers, and watching Mia and Grace rekindle their love against the backdrop of a bleak, mystifying universe is deeply satisfying. EB