The Epic Story of Every Living Thing - Hardcover

Caletti, Deb

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593485505 ISBN 13: 9780593485507

Verlag: Labyrinth Road, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

From the award-winning author of A Heart in a Body in The World comes a gorgeous and fiercely feminist young adult novel. When a teen travels to Hawaii to track down her sperm donor father, she discovers the truth about him, about the sunken shipwreck that’s become his obsession, and most of all about herself.

Harper Proulx has lived her whole life with unanswered questions about her anonymous sperm donor father. She's convinced that without knowing him, she can't know herself. When a chance Instagram post connects Harper to a half sibling, that connection yields many more and ultimately leads Harper to uncover her father's identity.

So, fresh from a painful breakup and still reeling with anxiety that reached a lifetime high during the pandemic, Harper joins her newfound half siblings on a voyage to Hawaii to face their father. The events of that summer, and the man they discover—a charismatic deep-sea diver obsessed with solving the mystery of a fragile sunken shipwreck—will force Harper to face some even bigger questions: Who is she? Is she her DNA, her experiences, her successes, her failures? Is she the things she loves—or the things she hates? Who she is in dark times? Who she might become after them?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Deb Caletti is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of over twenty books for adults and young adults, including Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, a finalist for the National Book Award; A Heart in a Body in the World, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book; Girl, Unframed; and One Great Lie. Her books have also won the Josette Frank Award for Fiction, the Washington State Book Award, and numerous other state awards and honors, and she was a finalist for the PEN USA Award. She lives with her family in Seattle.

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Chapter One


Marriages: In this city, April 1, Captain Joshua A. Patten, 26, master mariner, of Rockland, Maine, to Mary Ann Brown, 15, daughter of Mr. George Brown, seamaster, and Mrs. Elizabeth Brown, both of East Boston.

Boston Post, April 1, 1853


Harper scooches her foot this way, and then scooches her foot back. It’s always so hard to know what to do with your hands. Why are you so suddenly aware of your hands when you’re trying to take a good photo, when they usually just do their own thing? Right behind Harper, the sheer rock face of Rattlesnake Ridge sits like a headstone against the murky green of Rattlesnake Lake. When she posts those names, it’s all going to sound hazardous and thrilling, even if Harper has never seen any kind of snake there, just cagey squirrels darting around, and regular old crows staring menacingly. That murky green--it can be fixed in a second with a saturation edit. Ezra crouches down and then stands back up, snapping away. He’s great at getting a variety of angles. Right then, all of this is incredibly important to Harper. Crucial, even.

Later, much later, when Harper looks at those images, she’ll see a girl who lives at the surface, who doesn’t have a clue about what’s beneath it, including a bomb, an actual bomb, lying dormant, but not for long. She’ll see a girl who has no idea that she’s about to have a fateful meeting with another girl, and with a creature, too--a strange, glowing creature, the most beautiful underwater alien you can imagine, something with a soul, for sure. A creature that moves like a secret, mysterious heartbeat, in, out, rising from that old wreck as if to tell important truths about resilience, about what matters and what lasts. That wreck with a hidden story, as Harper has a hidden story.

But even more, when she looks at those images, she’ll see someone just standing there at Rattlesnake Ridge, worrying about her hair, completely unaware of what’s going to happen to her in a matter of hours.

“Is this good?” Harper shouts to Ezra.

“The mountain’s coming right out of your head,” he shouts back, and so Harper scoots to the left.

“Head tilt or no?” she shouts to Ezra.

“Sure,” he says.

Harper smiles, but it’s the kind of smile that doesn’t make it to your eyes. Even she can tell that, so she tries again. She tries to beam. She’s pretty sure a person doesn’t naturally beam, that beaming takes effort. Ezra click-clicks a bunch more.

“Let me see.”

Ez hands Harper her phone. He’s done this enough times to know it might be a while. He takes out his own phone to keep busy, thumbs flying as he texts, head bent down. He has the best hair. Dark curls, a mess of them. And he’s the best boyfriend, too. Sweet. The chunky-sweater, hey, do you want to try this kind, offering you a bite. Always letting Harper know that he’s thinking about her when they aren’t together. Always saying how lucky he is, and loving her body just as it is, and even being nice to Harper’s mom, who doesn’t think he’s good enough for her and sometimes shows it. Melinda Proulx, who teaches economics at their local community college, wants Ezra to be a go-getter, to have goals, to have the résumé of an up-and-coming CEO, even though he’s only seventeen. To be in student government, or an intern at Amazon. To be athletic, at least.

Ezra--with that mix of traits from his Cuban mother and his Jewish father, and his sometimes retro-rumpled clothing choices (a long scarf, his dad’s old overcoat)--he looks artistic or something, which Harper loves. Pretty much, Ezra actually just likes to read, and be with his family, and he has to work hard to pass his classes, but he has that undefinable vibe of being interesting. When she posts photos of both of them, they look interesting together. It’s a bonus.

Harper makes sure not to have too much lovey couple stuff on her page, though. It’s a delicate balance. When you look at someone’s posts, you want to feel slightly, pleasantly, voyeuristically envious, but not hostile, I-hate-you envious. She’s known for a hiking-outdoor-adventure vibe, lots of mountains and waterfalls and lakes and meaningful nature images, featuring Harper doing adventuresome things. But people like it when you break things up occasionally--shots of you with your interesting boyfriend, a sprinkling of adorable animals, some just-regular-life moments, and a few romantic yet unchallenging objects, like a rumpled bed or a latte or a croissant.

Harper’s pretty sure she could work at an advertising agency with all the stuff she’s figured out. Or maybe a false advertising agency, because the truth is, the idea of actual adventures is pretty terrifying. People fall off cliffs and drown in lakes and get buried under mountain avalanches. Do you know how many mosquito bites you’d get if you actually went hiking in a bikini? And what about all the deadly diseases that mosquitoes carry? Seriously, if she were truly going on mountain treks as often as it seems, how would she ever get her homework done? Or go to school at all? Or even have time to post all these photos of herself on forest trails with the sunlight coming through the trees? Take Rattlesnake Ridge, right there. In addition to its lack of rattlesnakes, that dramatic rock rising above the arc of green water makes it look like they hiked for miles into a hidden corner of paradise, when they’re really just a few steps from the parking lot, and a short drive from Seattle. Luckily, Washington State is full of places like this, and close to home, too.

Last year, during the first months of the pandemic, Rattlesnake Ridge sure wasn’t a hidden corner of paradise; it was packed. To cure the wall-scratching claustrophobia and sheer boredom of quarantine while still avoiding other human beings, everyone headed to the mountains and the beaches, which meant that everyone was now at the mountains and the beaches. They eventually closed all those places, which was kind of like closing down nature. Harper and her mom, under the same roof for weeks, drove out here, but the Ridge was so crowded, they turned right around and went home. Harper’s mom made her use hand sanitizer and wipes, even though they didn’t get out of the car.

Harper scrolls through the photos Ez just took. In some, her arms look big, she thinks, the way they’re squished against her sundress. In others, you can only see the bad side of her hair. It’s all she can see. Fat arms, bad hair. Fat arms, bad hair. Ugh.

“Hey, Harp. Ready?” Ezra zips his phone into his bag. “I’ve got to get back. I told my mom I’d watch Binx.” Binx is Ezra’s little brother, who’s three. These are more things to love about Ez--his sweet family, his mom and dad, the way he’s so cute and patient with that tiny terror, always making sure he has a couple of Band-Aids in his pocket, because Binx loves Band-Aids. The little guy is always sticking out a perfectly intact arm or knee and saying, OWEE, and after you carefully attend to the invisible wound, he’ll run off happily. Man, if it were only that easy with every wound you can’t see.

Harper wants to ask Ezra to take a few more photos so she can hold out her arms and smile with her lips closed, but he has to get home, and she doesn’t want to be one of those girls who treat their boyfriends like an assistant, with no lunch breaks or vacation days. She isn’t going to make him trek everywhere carrying tripods and lights, asking him to lift her up in his arms as her dress...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Labyrinth Road
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593485505
• ISBN 13: 9780593485507
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 416
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar