Launch thrusts readers into the life of Theo Strahl, a quirky artist and inventor from Winnipeg who’s spent the past two decades happily scavenging back lanes and transforming scrap into art. But beneath his contented exterior, Theo has always been quietly expecting the world to end within his lifetime.

On his fortieth birthday, Theo’s fears are brought to life when an otherworldly voice named Ford disrupts his celebration, commanding him to build a Noah’s Ark-esque spaceship to escape the doomed planet. As someone who’s convinced that the countdown to global collapse is ticking away, Ford’s message feels disturbingly plausible. In the weeks that follow, Theo becomes consumed by Ford’s impossible task, unraveling his once-happy life as he prepares to escape from a world he’s always feared would implode. His obsession strains his marriage and alienates his son -- leaving Theo to confront his deepest fears about life, love, and the meaning of survival.

Launch explores the haunting echoes of Cold War trauma, the fragility of family bonds, and the eternal struggle between hope and despair. In a world on the brink of ruin, can Theo salvage his relationships—or will his journey to the stars tear everything apart?

He lay between flannel sheets and under every blanket in the cedar chest. Now and then, his teeth still chattered, but the weight of the quilts was a comfort, prevented him from floating away.

He kept tabs on the room and on the moment: bedside table, highboy, mirror, shadows, scarf over the shade softening the light.

The house’s creaks and groans. The maple out the window moving in the wind. Alice had put new incense in the holder but he’d asked her not to light it.

“It feels like winter,” he said, though she was drying the bathroom floor and couldn’t hear.

When she slipped in beside him at last, her skin was cool. She ran a hand over him, more examination than caress. When she pressed his side, he resisted flinching as best he could.

“Did you hear us?” he asked her.

“Who?”

“The voice… from the candle.”

Her hand stopped. “Oh?” she said.

“It said the world was on its last legs and I had to build an ark.”

She got up onto an elbow.

“You really were asleep.”

“Not a boat like Noah. More of a spacecraft lifeboat.”

“God, the day you’ve had.”

“You think it was a dream?”

“You were in there so long. I should have checked.”

He said he’d never had a dream like that, with his eyes open and drying out. He described the flame enlarging before it spoke, as though inhaling, saying the Earth was dying, and ordering him not to tell her.

“What are we going to do about you and birthdays?”

“Ford.”

“What?”

“He called himself Ford.”

“Like a pickup truck?”

“It had to be a dream, right?”

“A bad dream.”

“Definitely,” he said, “but vivid and with my eyes wide open, right? That can happen, right?”

“A tubmare,” she said.