Record of a Spaceborn Few

I think this is my favorite of the Wayfarers series. The plot is tenuous at best, and the worldbuilding sketchy and dependent upon the reader's imagination, but the characters - oh, my, the characters. A frazzled mom (and a two-year-old who steals every scene he's in), a moody teen, an archivist observing and recording, and a stranger, an immigrant whose untimely death affects them all. My favorite was the sanitation worker whose task, preparing dead bodies for composting, is elevated to near-religious ritual - I found that aspect of the society particularly moving. These are all real and relatable people whose hopes and fears are not any different from our own, and it's comforting to see them all work out their difficulties, just as we have, and will.