Overview

NEW YORK TIMES essayist and 2025 Audie Awards(R) finalist Rebecca Anne Nguyen's stunning debut. In The 23rd Hero, an ordinary woman with an extraordinary memory travels back in time to 16th-century France to stop climate change before it starts and return to the man she loves. In a world ravaged by climate change, a mysterious time travel agency known as the Program sends carefully selected Heroes back in time on missions to prevent environmental damage before it happens. Sloane Burrows secretly longs to be a Hero and restore the natural world of her childhood-a world she can envision with absolute clarity because of her superpower memory. But her father raised Sloane to believe her ""freak memory"" is a shameful flaw that should be hidden from the world. Sloane stuffs her dream of being a Hero and conceals her memory to the point of making herself sick. Her only respite from the shame is the recurring dream she's been having for nearly a decade. In it, a breathtakingly beautiful man makes her feel accepted in a way she never has in waking life-not despite her memory, but because of it. But when the man in the dream shows up in real life, Sloane's world is turned upside down. Not only is Bastian a flesh-and-blood person, but he's from the Program, and he wants her to do the one thing that will shatter her chances of winning her dad's love: become a Hero, travel back in time to sixteenth-century France, and use her superpower memory to save the world. ""A page-turning, wild and marvelous ride."" - Susan Choi, Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Award Winner for Trust Exercise.

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Reviews

"Advance Praise for The 23rd Hero: ""A love story that transcends time with a hero the reader will never forget. This compulsively-readable debut will transport you from a dystopian future to the idyll of 16th century France, all on the wings of a love story for the ages."" - Jessica Pearce Rotondi, author of What We Inherit: A Secret War and a Family's Search for Answers ""Rebecca Nguyen's novel THE 23RD HERO is a breathtakingly original and gripping story - a fabulous debut!"" - Melodie Winawer, critically acclaimed author of The Scribe of Siena and Anticipation ""THE 23RD HERO is a thrilling, escapist ride through time, an old-fashioned romance, a modern parable about climate change, and, most importantly, the story of a woman finding her purpose. This is a delightful page-turner by an exciting new voice in fiction. "" - Mandy Berman, author of The Learning Curve and Perennials"

Author Information

Rebecca Anne Nguyen (she/her) is the author of the novel The 23rd Hero, a #1 Amazon bestseller, Audie Awards(R) finalist, and winner of the 2024 Reader's Choice Award for Best Adult Novel (Bronze). She is the co-author of the memoir Where Wars Ends, a 2019 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award winner for Autobiography/Memoir. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Insider, and Slackjaw, among others.

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