Choosing one's path

Towards the end of Matthew Kressel's novella The Rainseekers, his narrator makes an astute observation: "those who find others dull aren't digging deep enough. Inside every person is a story worth telling, and we have only ourselves to blame if we don't perk up our ears and listen."

It's a point that anchors this short read, and as a journalist, it's something that has long rung true for me. It's a good way to look for stories that have an impact, and it's what makes this such a delightful and thought-provoking read.

In the somewhat distant future, humanity has spread out into the solar system and has begun terraforming Mars. The atmosphere has changed enough that plants have begun to grow, and under the right conditions, someone can breathe outside. What's missing is rain, and scientists believe that the first rainfall is imminent. To capture the moment, a small group of inhabitants put together an expedition and begin chasing a weather front that – if all goes well – will see the first raindrops fall on the red planet.

Accompanying the group is Sakuja Salazar, a former influencer who had risen to incredible fame back on Earth, only to eventually realize that her life and work was incredibly unfulfilling. After crashing out, she picked up and left to travel the solar system in an effort to find some sort of meaning. She ends up on Mars, and took up photography, which attracted the attention of a magazine editor who wants her to document the trip out into the wastelands.

It's with this framing that Kressel's story really shines. Sakuja is there to document the trip, and as she photographs their journey, she begins talking to her companions, teasing out their stories. One tattooed woman tells the story of how her Hasidic father left his secluded upbringing and ended up on Mars to meet her biologist mother, the expedition's mechanic explains how he took up his job after a rough upbringing in the foster system and overcoming addition, and while one of their drivers details her backstory of domestic abuse and a lengthy prison sentence. By probing their stories (and recounting her own), Sakuja reveals how everyone's lives are made up of small decisions, happenstance, opportunities, and circumstances that ultimately bring them together as unlikely companions on this expedition.

It's a fine character study, if a bit selective of people with tragic pasts, all coming to a point that each person arrived where they are because of the decisions that they made. Sakuja realized that her life hawking products on social media was empty when she learns two years after the fact that her best friend was killed in a drone accident, and decides to change her life. Jivanta explains that her father decided to get out of an arranged marriage and his insular world after realizing that he wasn't satisfied with its constraints, Doug decided to throw himself into his studies to get away from his upbringing, and Shabnan eventually snaps after her abusive husband puts his hands on her one too many times and kills him in self defense.

Something that I've been thinking a lot about writing recently is how the stories that work the best are the ones that are about how the decisions a character makes shapes their journey. It's their decisions that show how they react to the changes in their path, how they overcome problems and conflicts big and small, ensuring that they aren't just coasting along on momentum. They're an active participant in their journey.

This easily could have been a more passive book: Sakuja just listening to the stories of her fellow passengers as they roll along the Martian surface, but Kressel balances these stories along with the journey that they're undertaking – and the decisions that each expedition member makes along the way to reach their destination. They run into plenty of problems, from mechanical breakdowns to fatal accidents to rough terrain, but as they move forward, almost everyone is making the choice to keep going – the same choice that each character vignette has reinforced: everyone chooses to keep moving forward, little by little, until they find themselves in one another's company.