Her third novel, "America Was Hard to Find" (2019), an epic loosely centered on space travel between Sputnik (1957) and the Challenger disaster (1986), was noted for its "sprawling" historical scope, its multifaceted cultural critique of the United States, and it frank treatment of feminism, countercultural radicalism, and the AIDS crisis. "The New Yorker" stated that the book "displays a sure-handed lyricism—from the lunar surface, the sky appears 'glossy like a baby girl’s church shoes'—but its energy lies in its skepticism about the American century and the parallels the author finds between contradictory currents."