By Michael Bassen
Coming in 2024
Thirteen-year-old Glory Eleanor Loomis of Sackatucket, Long Island makes a shocking discovery in a secondhand bookstore when she picks up a book that reads like a horror storOn a Friday afternoon in early spring, Glory Eleanor Loomis, 13, of Sackatucket, Long Island makes a shocking discovery in a second-hand bookstore. She finds a novel called Invasion Earth! set in Roswell, New Mexico (her parents’ birthplace) containing a picture of her brother Michael, captioned “George Edward Livermore,” and another of her space-suited mother and father, identified as George’s parents. Glory is further shaken when the main character’s life reads like a horror story version of her own and her mother re-enacts a nerve- wracking scene from the book that Glory has just read.
But things take an even weirder and more worrisome turn when she’s suddenly beset by a flurry of eerie flu-like symptoms, collapses onto her bedroom floor, and awakens twelve hours later, bewildered and terrified, in a hospital bathroom. Unaware that she is caught in the grip of biological forces that no one sees or understands, she begins to change in secret, subtle and stupefying ways, till her transformation is complete—and her unprecedented journey has begun.
Be careful what you wish for, someone once said. But in the end, Glory could not have wished for more.
y version of her own life.
Things take an even weirder and more worrisome turn when she’s suddenly beset by a flurry of eerie flu-like symptoms, collapses onto her bedroom floor, and awakens twelve hours later, bewildered and terrified, in a hospital bathroom.
Unaware that she is caught in the grip of biological forces that no one sees or understands, she begins to change in secret, subtle, and stupefying ways until her transformation is complete. Be careful what you wish for, someone once said. But in the end, Glory could not have wished for more.
“A terrifically entertaining and original story from beginning to end, The Evolution of Glory Loomis by Michael Bassen is very highly recommended for both high school and community library YA Fiction collections. For teen age and young adult science fiction enthusiasts, it should be noted for personal reading lists that The Evolution of Glory Loomis will also be available in a Kindle edition.”
– Midwest Book Review
“Michael Bassen’s Y/A novel The Evolution of Glory Loomis mixes science fiction and fantasy and is set in Long Island, Manhattan, and Connecticut. The near-future narrative features a half-dozen mysteries, two complementary adventures, and what may wellbe a first-of-its kind love story as Steven Spielberg meets Judy Blume! The novel is also a familiar coming- of-age story, one that is skewed by the protagonist’s extraordinary intellect andextra-human emotions. These include feelings that Glory describes in Speaksong, a language she created.”
— Christopher Douglass, Norwalk Community College Adjunct Instructor
About the Author
Michael Bassen was born and raised in New York City, received his bachelor’s degree from Trinity College (Conn) and his master’s degree from Harvard. He spent the next thirty-two years as a public high school English teacher and union official on Long Island.
In his time away from school, he’s written several stories and full-length plays (one of them a finalist in the Eugene O’Neill playwriting competition), created a number of educational games (the last being “Shakespeare’s Mind” based on Shakespeare’s sonnets), and composed a great many songs (with and without lyrics).
His first novel, The Evolution of Glory Loomis, was largely inspired by his wife (a teacher and writer) and two (now grown-up) daughters (a teacher and a child psychiatrist).