"A story about flying saucers, burgeoning cult leaders, and a heartbroken woman with a fantastical gift, Helium is a mesmerizing historical novel." - Clarion Reviews, 5/5 stars
Will wonders never cease?
Joan has a gravity problem-and she's desperate to keep it hidden. Haunted by a loss too heavy to bear, she drifts to Palomar Gardens, a tiny Southern California commune where hope hovers and teases. Here she encounters George, a charismatic mystic whose lofty visions will soon captivate the world.
Drawn into George's orbit, Joan finds her footing. But the line between wonder and deception is thin, and her hold on reality slips. Improbable machines appear in the sky, only to vanish without explanation. Beautiful lies masquerade as truth. Her secret unmoors with consequences she cannot foresee.
Helium is a story of faith, folly, and the fragile human longing to touch the stars-of searching for a place in the cosmos where the possible and the impossible carry equal weight.
"Enthralling literary fiction [...] the kind of book you devour." - Independent Book Review
"Engaging [...] a skillfully written, multi-dimensional tale." - BlueInk Review
"Strange, sorrowful, and luminous." - Literary Titan, 5/5 stars
"Dave Kenney's debut, Helium, is a beautiful meditation on what happens when our need to believe inevitably runs headlong into the cost of truth. A richly imagined story of the collective postwar psyche, the novel shows how the terrible, earthbound reality of grief always seems to send us looking for answers in the heavens. It's a fantastic book. I highly recommend it." - Kevin Powers, National Book Award finalist and author of The Yellow Birds