The Centauri Settlement

In 2062 thirty people leave Earth en-route to our nearest neighbor Alpha Centauri, which is only 4.3 light years away. (The distance is actually less on account of Einstein's 1905 special relativity theory, and is explained in the book.)
The novel is not 'gee-whiz science fiction', but an almost realistic adventure that includes a smidgin of elementary astronomy as well as a small amount of earth's factual history. With a background of various imagined difficulties for earth in the 2040s and 2050s much of the novel concerns human interactions and flashbacks.
The tale takes place over a period of a dozen years, and it is both an imaginative and perhaps predictable look at the possibilities and even impossibilities of life on a relatively nearby planet. It requires no actual science knowledge -- and sticks as close to near-plausibility as possible.