The Observable Universe: An Investigation

A moving memoir of a young woman's reckoning with her parents' absence, the virus that took them, and what it means to search for meaning in a hyper-connected world

In the early 1990s, Heather McCalden lost her parents to AIDS. Orphaned by age ten, she was raised by her grandmother in Los Angeles, a fragmented city, also known as ground zero for the virus and its destruction. Years later, unmoored by grief, she begins exploring the history of HIV as a way to deal with her loss. This leads her to discover that AIDS and the internet developed along parallel timelines, lending truth to the saying "going viral." Chasing this idea through anecdotes, TV shows, scientific papers, Wikipedia entries, and internet history, McCalden forms a synaptic experience of what happened to her family, one that leads to an unexpected discovery about who her parents might have been.