The search by camper van takes Hope to a couple communes and ultimately across the country, but her sister clearly does not want to be found and their meeting is a little anti-climactic, though Hope learns a lot about herself. A picture of the girls' childhood begins to emerge – selfish father, hippie-dippy mothers and unresolved trauma from the kidnapping incident.

Hope also returns to the world of her estranged father, who was tangentially responsible for the kidnapping when he neglected to pick them up at the bus station on his custody weekend. This sends Hope on a quest to find her half-sister Eden who experienced the trauma with her, though maybe worse since she was older at the time. Her mother has recently died of cancer and she receives a letter out of the blue letting her know the man (Larry) who kidnapped her as a pre-teen is up for parole. Hope is a thirty-something, NY playwright, hanging on by a thread - professionally, socially, emotionally. Read moreģ.5 The author is a performance artist and it shows in her creativity and ability to envision the world of this bizarre, but plausible story, as well as in the main character's profession and mindset. The Chicago Tribune lauded Stanislaw Lem as “not only a marvelous spinner of tales of the fantastic but also a challenging philosopher of the meanings and ramifications of technology.” Eden stands as a timeless and powerful examination of the conflict between human nature, human discovery, and all-too-human flaws. But as the crew unlocks the secrets of this twisted society, the most haunting fact they must face is how similar it is to their own. Something is wrong with the inhabitants of Eden.

And everywhere there are images of death: mass graves, bodies in ditches and wells, clusters of egglike structures filled with skeletons. In a labyrinth of plant-shaped buildings are dead ends, passageways, domes, vaulted ceilings, and giant statues. But it is the signs of humanity that are most puzzling. The landscape is bizarre, hosting acrid deserts, hissing trees, and thick spiderlike vegetation. Six explorers-the Captain, Doctor, Engineer, Chemist, Physicist, and Cyberneticist-crash land on a beautiful but strange planet, fourth from another sun. From the author of Solaris, this novel of an encounter with an alien intelligence creates “a terrifyingly plausible picture of a world gone mad” ( Kirkus Reviews).

Eden stanislaw lem