Hello, I'm Melissa NADMorney, and this is NPR's book of the day.

Today's book tells a story that spans hundreds of years.

There are multiple storylines and characters, all connected by the story of a queer

teenager's video game.

It's called Homebound, and it's the debut novel by Portia Elon.

Elon spoke with NPR's Scott Detrow.

Cincinnati, 1983, a video game played in 2090, the Mid-Atlantic Ocean in spring 2586.

These are the places and times woven together in a new novel Homebound. Author Portia

Alon explains that...

At its heart, Homebound is about a group of characters across time and space, all of whom are

trying to answer the question of who am I and where do I belong. And it's the universality of figuring

out those answers that makes the book tick.

It starts in the 1980s with a young woman named Bex, whose beloved uncle has just died,

and he leaves her an unfinished computer game.

And her choice to finish that game ends up echoing 600 years into the future.

I read that you started with this early 80s timeline

and Bex, who's such a relatable character. And as we get farther and farther out, characters are

still relatable, but the worlds are more and more different from Mars. Tell me how that grew in your

mind, how you thought that this story that you started with could end up 500 plus years in the

future? I sensed from the very beginning that the question that was really animating Bex

and her vulnerability, that sense of being an outsider who didn't belong. It was also a question

that I shared. And I just understood at like a very deep

...