The Sparrow By - Mary Doria Russell

For a while, it was a dream.

Emilio Sandoz was taken captive by the Jana’ata. the sparrow by mary doria russell

The Sparrow is a story about first contact, but it is really a story about the silence of God, the nature of evil, and the terrifying, beautiful, broken miracle of human love. It asks the oldest question: If God is good, why do the innocent suffer? And it dares to answer: I don’t know. But I will sit with you in the darkness anyway. For a while, it was a dream

The Society of Jesus, ever the explorer of frontiers, saw a mission. They secretly financed an expedition. Emilio would not go alone. He gathered a family of kindred spirits: Anne and George Edwards, the married scientists who first detected the signal; Jimmy Quinn, a brilliant but tormented engineer; Sofia Mendes, a fierce and wounded computer expert; Marc Robichaux, a veteran physician; and D.W. Yarbrough, a young, earnest technician. It asks the oldest question: If God is

Marc and D.W. died in the initial violence. George and Anne were captured and killed. Jimmy Quinn, whose sanity had always been fragile, snapped. He sabotaged their only communication device and then, in a final act of madness, murdered Sofia and left her for dead before vanishing into the wilderness.