New YA Novel Captures Mystery, Coming Of Age In Green Bank, W.Va.

This conversation originally aired in the Oct. 26, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia.

A new novel for young adults captures a slice of life in Pocahontas County, West Virginia.

The Secret Astronomers tells the story of a friendship between two high school students as they unravel a decades-old mystery. It’s the debut novel by Jessica Walker.

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

Adams: This is your debut book, and it’s kind of an unusual one. How did you land on this idea of having two high school students become secret pen pals by writing notes to each other in an old textbook?

Walker: The idea really started as a question, like a lot of ideas do, and that question for me is, “How is it possible that we as a human species are developing technology to talk to life forms hundreds of light years away, but we can’t figure out how to talk to our neighbor down the street, who shares 99.9% of our DNA but doesn’t share our political views?”

I’m really interested in that divide, which is often a rural/urban divide. The two main characters in this book could not be from more opposite ends of our country’s political spectrum, but they find a very unique way to connect, unexpectedly and inside a shared book where they keep their deepest, darkest secrets. We get to join them on this very exciting mystery, which is also a coming-of-age story. I’ve always been fascinated by random encounters as a way to connect with people. I know that they say not to talk to strangers, but I never really took that advice in my life. I was the type of kid who would leave a post-it note in a random library book with a question on it and hope that somebody would write back to me. Nobody ever did, but I don’t see that practice of leaving a post-it note really as any different than sending a radio signal out into the universe and hoping that someone or something responds back.

Adams: What led you to set this story in West Virginia, and specifically Pocahontas County, near the Green Bank Telescope?

Walker: I remember driving through West Virginia as a kid and seeing the Green Bank Telescope for the first time, and you feel like you’re on another planet. You’re in the middle of rural Appalachia. You’re surrounded by dairy barns and Dollar General and hay fields, and all of a sudden, this amazing piece of technology rises out of the earth. I’ve always just been fascinated with that area. Many years later, after I grew up and I went to college, I took a bunch of astronomy classes.

I don’t quite have the brain for astrophysics — I’m more of an artist — but I took as many astronomy classes as I could, and we learned about the Green Bank Observatory and the National Radio Quiet Zone, and how it’s an epicenter for the search for extraterrestrial life. I just am fascinated by that and the telescope itself. It’s massive. It’s the size of a football stadium in the air, and standing next to it is completely humbling. It can point in any direction. I’ve learned a lot about it. I got to visit as part of the research for the book, and scientists from all over the world are coming to Green Bank to use this amazing piece of technology to search for patterns and radio waves that might indicate life beyond our Earth. Appalachia, aliens. Like, how could you not want to write a story in Green Bank, West Virginia? It’s an amazing place.

Adams: It’s a very deliberate choice to set this story there. It does have ramifications for what happens in the book. So once you decided on that setting, how did you move forward? How did that choice affect how you wrote this story in terms of characters and plot?

Walker: Even now, in our age of constant connection, teenagers in Green Bank have to be really creative with how they communicate, because texting and social media aren’t always as immediately available to them. I was just really interested in that idea. Any kind of device in Green Bank — a cell phone, a kitchen microwave — could potentially interfere with what the telescope is doing in its sensing of the universe, and that really drove the book’s direction and how the characters have to communicate with one another.

Adams: I’m interested in hearing your perspective on the mountains, as someone who grew up in the region and then moved to New York about 20 years ago. I know for a lot of folks, they have a complicated relationship with their home community, but sometimes moving away provides some clarity. Can you talk a little bit more about your connection to Appalachia and sort of how the move to New York shifted it or changed it?

Walker: My people are from McDowell County, West Virginia. My grandmother was from Welch, and my grandfather grew up in Gary, West Virginia, what they call No. 10 mine, back in the U.S. steel days. So I definitely have family roots in that part of the world. On the other side of my family, my family’s from Wise County, Virginia, and I grew up down the road in Washington County, Virginia. I lived there until I was the ripe old age of 18, and then I decided I had to get out of there and run away to California and live in San Francisco, because I just thought that would be the coolest thing to do. And it was, and I don’t regret it, but I learned a lot of things in the move away from southwestern Virginia. Being a kid that grew up in southwestern Virginia means you have this really playful connection to the land. I think you get into a lot of good country trouble. You are really immersed in nature, and this is a very different experience than the way I’m raising my children in Brooklyn, for better or for worse. I think we all have our childhoods and learn interesting things, but this place of Appalachia is in my blood, and it continues to humor me and haunt me in ways that just seem to come out as stories. 

I really hope that readers experience a new perspective on rural Appalachia, and in particular in the book, through Kepler’s perspective. She’s the one that’s born and bred in Pocahontas County. We do see some of the challenges that young Appalachian folks are more likely to face — lack of resources or opportunities for higher education or incarcerated family members — but Kepler’s character really grapples with the stereotypes, and she brings depth and nuance to her situation, and she also recognizes the ways that she has to change and adapt her thinking. I hope readers will find that relatable, and maybe they’ll learn something, too.

Adams: The characters in the book are Kepler, who you mentioned, and Copernicus. These are references to historic astronomers, and the characters deliberately make the choice to remain anonymous — to keep their correspondence clean and not muddy it with the rest of their lives. For teenagers like Copernicus and Kepler — who may or may not love where they live, but feel constrained — what advice do you have?

Walker: ”Advice” is an interesting word. I might put it under the heading of “offerings,” just to protect myself a little bit. I work with Gen Z a lot, and I have two young kids, so “offerings” may be more applicable here. Evolutionary biology tells us that perhaps we’re not supposed to love where we’re from. If we always loved where we’re from, we would never leave, and it’s our biological duty to spread our genetics. So it’s quite human of you if you are a teenager who doesn’t love where they’re from. If you feel constrained in this feeling of not loving where you’re from, you’re not alone in that.

I would say that writing about it, or making art about where you’re from, and finding some lens to channel that through — I highly recommend humor and satire and drama — and try to bring light to what you know about your perspective. Your authorial voice is very powerful. You can write, people will listen, and no one will have your perspective on that place that you’re from. You can drive a way that they might think about it differently. And one day you might leave and you’re far away from home, and you look back and you realize where you’re from is actually really amazing and beautiful, and it shapes who you are, and you’ll never get rid of it as a part of you.

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The Secret Astronomers lands in stores in early November. It’s available from Penguin Random House.