Rough Translation

Dr. Jonathan Blair is a linguist who thinks he understands the power of words until he meets Easton, a man whose speech is laced with impossible terms and alien emotional textures. Easton claims he's been in contact with Martians. The scientific community has dismissed him as a crackpot, but Blair sees something in the strange cadence of his speech that no one else can: a language, however fractured, that follows its own internal logic. As Blair dedicates himself to translating Easton's bizarre vocabulary, he finds himself drawn into a father-son conversation that hits unexpectedly close to home. His own young son Richie has started talking about imaginary friends and fantastical realms, and Blair begins to wonder whether the line between translation and transformation might be thinner than he thought. The novel builds toward a revelation about Mars, overpopulation, and the dangerous weight of truths that humanity might not be ready to carry. Janis writes with gentle humor and genuine tenderness, using the puzzle of alien language to ask what we lose when we refuse to listen to voices that don't sound like our own.