A novel of ambition and obsession centered on the race to discover Pluto in 1930, pitting an untrained Kansas farm boy against the greatest minds of Harvard at the run-down Lowell Observatory in Arizona

In 1928, the boy who will discover Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh, is on the family farm, grinding a lens for his own telescope under the immense Kansas sky. In Flagstaff, Arizona, the staff of Lowell Observatory is about to resume the late Percival Lowell's interrupted search for Planet X. Meanwhile, the immensely rich heir to a chemical fortune has decided to go west to hunt for dinosaurs and in Cambridge, Massachussetts, the most beautiful girl in America is going slowly insane while her ex-heavyweight champion boyfriend stands by helplessly, desperate to do anything to keep her. Inspired by the true story of Tombaugh and set in the last gin-soaked months of the flapper era, Percival's Planet tells the story of the intertwining lives of half a dozen dreamers, schemers, and madmen. Following Tombaugh's unlikely path from son of a farmer to discoverer of a planet, the novel touches on insanity, mathematics, music, astrophysics, boxing, dinosaur hunting, shipwrecks -- and what happens when the greatest romance of your life is also the source of your life's greatest sorrow.

• We started tracking this book on August 11, 2010.
• This book was $12.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 18 times in the past 5,463 days.
• The current price of this book is $9.99 last checked 15 hours ago.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $0.50.
• The lowest price to date was $0.50 last reached on June 20, 2025.
• This book has been $0.50 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $14.99 last reached on May 17, 2025.
• This book has been $14.99 one time since we started tracking it.

• Literature & FictionLiterary FictionMystery, Thriller & Suspense

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 431 Pages
• File Size: 30 KB