Way Station

Way Station is a contemplative, thoughtful book about a man out of time and out of place.

Enoch Wallace fought in the US Civil War. Shortly afterwards, he was recruited to run a teleportation way station for Galactic Central, and since then he has hardly aged. Able to tell no-one, he has withdrawn from human society, but still feels a strong attachment to humanity. In the course of the book, several crises come to a head, and Wallace needs to decide where he stands; whether he is a citizen of Earth, or a member of the galactic community, and whether the two have to be in conflict.

I liked the book. The science is not very sciency, and there's a distinct whiff of magic. One of the plot points turns on a deeply unlikely coincidence, and there's a whole subplot that seems entirely extraneous, but none of that really matters. It's the problems and concerns of Enoch Wallace that feel important, and those are handled with style.