Eliana Ramage, Cherokee

 Doubleday wins three-way auction for Eliana Ramage’s ‘expansive coming-of-age’ debut

Apr 23, 2025 by Heloise Wood

Eliana Ramage © Leah Margulies

Doubleday has acquired To the Moon and Back, the debut novel by Eliana Ramage, in a three-way auction.

Editorial director Bobby Mostyn-Owen acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein following a three-way bidding war, on behalf of Meredith Kaffel Simonoff at The Gernert Company.

Doubleday will publish in hardback in February 2026. Margo Shickmanter at Avid Reader Press will publish in the US this autumn, as will Simon & Schuster Canada.

The synopsis reads: “Steph Harper is on the run. When she was six, her mother ran – with Steph and her younger sister in tow – from an abusive husband into the arms of a small Cherokee community, where she hoped they might finally belong. But Steph soon sets her sights as far away as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing interfere with her dream to become an astronaut, and ultimately, to go to the moon.

“In Steph’s certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with the three women who know and love her most dearly.” These include her younger sister Kayla, an artist, her college girlfriend Della, who was removed from her family as a young girl through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act, as well as her mother Hannah, who has held up her family’s history as an inspiration, all the while keeping her own secrets.

Doubleday said: “Told through these women’s interwoven lives, and spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive coming-of-age novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths one woman will go to find a little space for herself.”

Mostyn-Owen said: “To the Moon and Back is a fearless novel that does nothing by halves. Eliana Ramage’s bold vision, powerful voice and unmeted imagination floored me. Marrying powerful writing, brilliant characters and propulsive plotting, To the Moon and Back is the sort of rare and special debut that we yearn to encounter. I’m over the moon to publish this love-letter to the unsteadiness of human connection, and the enormous pull of our heart’s desires.”

Ramage said: “I’m so happy to get to work with Bobby. And I’m proud to be on Doubleday’s list alongside authors I admire. This book started out as a more straightforward idea about a Cherokee astronaut about a decade ago, but in that time my own understanding of it expanded outward. 

“The novel came to hold and to question not only Native identity, but also queerness, growing up, family and ambition. Bobby, with their sharp eye for complex characters, momentum, humour and so much more, has been a dream of a partner in this work.”

Ramage holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has been a Lambda Literary fellow and writer-in-residence, a Harpo Foundation Native American Residency Fellow at Vermont Studio Center, a Tin House Scholar and a Kimmel Harding Nelson resident. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she lives in Nashville with her family.