Under Story: A GMA Book Club Pick

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK

The New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists returns with an intimate yet epic love story—and a sweeping odyssey of scientific discovery. Under Story invites us to consider the promise of this life, what might lie beyond it, and how far we would go for more time with the people we love, cementing Chloe Benjamin’s place among our best, and most lasting, storytellers.

“We wake up to tomorrow, never yesterday.”

At the edge of the world, biologist Laurel Salter is hiding from everything she’s ever known. For ten hours a day, six days per week, she works as a dishwasher at McMurdo Station, an isolated research base in Antarctica. She tells no one that before she arrived, she was a renowned young scientist with a promising career and a family.

But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can’t escape her past. When a strange light appears across the ice—and draws a group of physicists to McMurdo—her former husband, Eli, won't be far behind. Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive. And though Eli is reluctant to test her wildest theory, Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole and into a world they can barely imagine. Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them—to turn back the clock and live their story a second time?

A breathless page-turner and a love letter to our planet, Under Story grapples with the great questions of our time: human hubris, the precarity of the natural world, and the mysterious webs of consciousness that bind us. A modern epic of science and soul, of bravery and redemption, it offers a vision of the future that demands we reckon with what we owe to one another, and to the earth itself.

Chloe Benjamin is the author of THE IMMORTALISTS, a New York Times Bestseller, and THE ANATOMY OF DREAMS. Her third novel, UNDER STORY, will be published in September 2026.

A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, THE IMMORTALISTS was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. THE ANATOMY OF DREAMS received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Originally from San Francisco, CA, Benjamin is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives with her husband in the San Francisco Bay Area.

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK

"[An] expansive speculative saga… Benjamin could have written a far shorter novel. Some may say that less is more. But “Under Story” isn’t meant to be a minimalist work.
Leaning away from her austere contemporaries, Benjamin delights in the details of love and the everyday world, the smell of Laurel’s family’s apple orchard, communal living, the discovery of letters, unexpected second chances. Like Laurel and Eli, Benjamin wants so much more from this life than what we’re offered — she wants to embrace the interconnectedness of nature and humanity. Ever-shifting and blooming with tremendous tenderness, Under Story expands our expectations of living.” —New York Times Book Review

“[An] elegant blend of realistic fiction and uncanny sci-fi. [Benjamin’s] third novel is a beguiling, unpredictable study in sorrow and an uplifting ode to nature’s regenerative genius…Smart and wonderfully strange, Benjamin’s novel is a paean to life’s impermanence and to its capacity for renewal.” —San Francisco Chronicle

"So thought-provoking, and twisty that you won't want the book to end." —Los Angeles Times

"Under Story is an astoundingly imaginative and immersive work of fiction that veers off any sort of traditional pathway and takes us all the way to a parallel universe... There is almost a hallucinogenic quality to Benjamin's prose that is both mystical and reality based." —Book and Film Globe

“Chloe Benjamin is an astonishing writer who conjures an entire parallel universe to illuminate one family’s loss. Under Story is the most ingenious novel I’ve read in a long time, and yet its scenes depicting the ordinary joys and sorrows of parenthood, marriage, and friendship are perhaps most magical of all. If this speculative masterpiece has a flaw, it’s that at 500 pages it feels too short."–Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

"A rapturously beautiful novel. I was in awe of Chloe Benjamin’s universe-straddling imagination, her profound writing on love and grief, and her telescopic vision that lets her zoom into the smallest chambers of the human heart and far out again into the laws of theoretical physics. I loved Under Story."—Kaliane Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of The Ministry of Time

"A head-spinning novel, daringly imaginative. Even as she plays with physics and fantasy, Chloe Benjamin has much to say about the nature of friendship, family, mortality and love."–Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of March

"An absolute feat of storytelling, and a once in a lifetime novel. Under Story will stay with you long after you read the final, dazzling page." –Rebecca Serle, New York Time bestselling author of In Five Years

“Under Story is phenomenal, and one of the best books I've read in years. Wondrous, wildly ambitious, an epic love story that I’m so grateful exists in the world.” –Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

“A fiendishly clever, utterly original novel that gets to the heart of what it means to be alive. Under Story is dazzling: it will change you.” –Emilia Hart, New York Times bestselling author of Weyward

“Under Story is a spectacular novel. It is utterly transporting, with an imaginative scope that feels both breathtaking and profound. I was blown away by it." –Clare Leslie Hall, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Country

“A mind-bending, head-popping sci-fi love story full of intrigue and tenderness.” –Claire Fuller, author of Swimming Lessons

“At once intimate and sweeping, Chloe Benjamin’s new novel looks at the magic of science and the power of love, examines life’s spark from the smallest atoms to the furthest cosmos, and braids together two worlds with astonishing imagination. Beautifully crafted and tenderly felt, Under Story is a feat—for readers in search of a gripping exploration of the strange mystery of life, loss, and time.” –Aja Gabel, author of The Lightbreakers

“Part science epic and part sweeping love story, Chloe Benjamin’s latest novel is an ode to the natural world and humanity’s place within it… Under Story grapples with the unknown, ultimately delivering a powerful message on the precarious and precious nature of the universe and human life itself.” –Harper's Bazaar

“Since The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin has shown a rare ability to blend intimate family drama with boldly imaginative ideas...Part love story, part speculative epic, and part meditation on grief, Under Story asks how far we would go for more time with the people we love.” –Book and Film Globe

“Count on Benjamin to ask the big questions—what makes a life worth living? What is the nature of time? Where do we belong?—and entertain us fully all the while. Cannot wait to read.” –Lit Hub, "Most Anticipated Books of 2026"

“Benjamin’s imaginative rendering of the antiuniverse offers truly unique ways of thinking about time, nature, progress, duty, and aging….Blending literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and scientific research, Benjamin has created a genre-bending novel that is deeply concerned with the tenuous, mysterious, and enduring symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. Ambitious, poignant, and deeply human.” –Kirkus

“Benjamin (The Immortalists) blends speculative fiction and romance in this sui generis story of an erstwhile couple who discover a parallel universe. Benjamin holds the reader’s attention with well-conceived depictions of the Duoverse, where people age in reverse from death to birth, but the heart of the story is in Laurel and Eli’s desperate attempt to mend their lives and recover their love. This captivates.” –Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)