The Uncertainty Principle - Hardcover

Davis, Joshua; Kini-Davis, Kal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593660307 ISBN 13: 9780593660300

Verlag: Penguin Workshop, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

An epic, breathtaking story of self-discovery, love, and adventure from New York Times bestselling author Joshua Davis and his son Kal Kini-Davis, perfect for fans of Nina LaCour and John Green.

Seventeen-year-old Mia is stranded in the middle of the Caribbean. After a mortifying incident in the school cafeteria, her parents decide there is only one way to deal with her meltdown: move onto a battered sailboat and leave everything behind. Her mom and dad think it’s the best decision they’ve ever made. Mia feels like she’s been kidnapped and imprisoned in paradise with no internet and no destination.

Her only hope is to hack together a solar-powered satellite phone so she can call her best friend and fix everything. To do it, she’ll have to build a mobile laboratory on the boat and ignore her neurotic mother, who thinks Mia is falling apart.

The problem is, Mia is falling apart. By day, she scours deserted islands, looking for anything she can use to build the phone. At night, she squeezes into a narrow bunk and talks to an imaginary friend. She knows, with absolute certainty, that she needs to abandon her family to save her sanity.

And then two teenagers sail into her world, promising friendship, and maybe even romance. Thoughtful, soulful Alby was raised in Australia but now his family calls the sea their home. The only thing missing is his soulmate. Bold, beautiful Nisha is simply vacationing on her dad’s megayacht when a chance encounter upends her life.

Now—with everything hanging in the balance—Mia must decide who she is and what she wants. And with this decision comes the revelation that her past and future are more uncertain than she thought.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joshua Davis (he/him) is the New York Times bestselling author of Spare Parts, The Underdog, and Entrenched. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in feature writing and produced the Sundance Audience Award–winning film Radical. He is the co-founder of Epic Magazine.

Kal Kini-Davis (he/him) is a sailor and writer. He recently graduated high school in San Francisco and is now studying wooden boatbuilding in the Pacific Northwest. He believes that boats have souls, just as people do.

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Chapter 1

A sharp whip of salt water lashes the bow of the dinghy and smacks Mia hard in the face. With her free hand, she wipes the water from her eyes, blinking furiously to see through the warm rain. She knows she shouldn’t be out here, certainly not on a battered ten-?foot inflatable dinghy. The storm is quickly transforming the blue Caribbean into angry, darkened waves. She needs to turn back now, head for the safety of the French West Indies behind her.

Instead, she twists the throttle and accelerates into the storm.

Up ahead, she sees nothing but sheets of gray­black rain and waves that rise like terrible, shape?­shifting creatures. Her dinghy, with its puny six-?horsepower outboard motor, is like a puppy lost in the wilderness. She is already half sunk, with the pummeling rain and the boat’s floorboards sloshing with seawater. The only upside: The water on board adds weight, holding the boat down so the violent gusts don’t flip her like a pancake.

Sheets of mist streak off the tops of the waves, giving her only brief glimpses of what’s ahead. With each rise of the swell, Mia unconsciously holds her breath, hoping to spot her. But then the dinghy drops into a trough and Mia’s heart falls.

I’ve lost her, she thinks, the tears welling up.

Six months ago if someone had said she’d end up racing into a tropical storm on a rescue mission, she would have laughed. She thought high school in Duluth would just grind on forever, an endless succession of awkward days. She could never have imagined this, battling through nine?­foot waves on a small rubber boat in the Caribbean.

The salt water pours down her ­sun-?­streaked brown hair and stings her eyes, turning them bloodshot, and she laughs through the tears. She must look truly insane: red-­eyed, hair blowing wildly, bouncing across the surface like a skipping stone. If kids from school saw her, they’d probably think she’d lost her mind.

Which isn’t far from the truth.

Ahead, a wave sweeps toward her, getting bigger until it looms like a mountain and begins to wobble. The wave must be at least fifteen feet. She tenses as the white crest crumbles and turns into an avalanche of water.

A jolt of panic courses through her—?if the wave hits her, she’ll be crushed. She instinctively jams the engine hard over to dodge the onslaught and eyes the angle of the swell, the push of the wind, and the speed of the dinghy. She might make the shoulder of the wave. The far edge hasn’t broken yet. If she can get there in time, she can get up and over before the wave reaches her.

She twists the throttle harder, knowing that the engine is already maxed out. But every bit of power matters now as the boat begins to rise up the wall of water. She keeps the side of the boat to the wind, using the surface like a sail to gain any extra distance.

It doesn’t help. The boat loses speed as it rises up the wave, and Mia realizes that this could be the end, the roar of the wave growing louder, only seconds away now. And, for the first time since leaving Duluth, Mia screams in fury, letting all the anger and fear boil out. She stands precariously and rages against everything with a primal, wild war cry—?a warning to the wave, to the sea, to the world—?hat she’s not giving up.

And then the wave hits her.

Chapter 2
Two Weeks Earlier

A light wind ripples the perfect blue of the Caribbean. In every direction, the water is flat and calm. Mia glances up at the tels on the sail of her forty?­three­foot sailboat. The little snippets of nylon flutter loosely. Barely enough wind to make headway. Mia estimates they’re moving at two knots bearing south by southwest. She squints over the bow. The sky is dotted with dollops of white clouds. On the foredeck, the dinghy is lashed upside down, looking like a baby napping on its mother’s chest. Everything is quiet and almost pleasant.


Kaden doesn’t even notice the soft breeze ruffle the pages of his plastic-­wrapped copy of Captain Underpants. He’s gotten so used to the boat, it’s like he doesn’t remember their life before. It’s easier for a ten-?­year-?old, Mia thinks. Her little brother has pretty much forgotten Duluth.

It’d be cold there today, she thinks. March in Minnesota meant parkas, scarves, and breath billowing like smoke. If she were home, she’d be doing her best to fit in: wear the right clothes, say the right things, or at least not say the wrong things. With green eyes and a wide, angular jaw, she is strikingly pretty, but she tends to say weird things about engines and radio waves. With other kids in Duluth, she had a blazing intensity that left little room for small talk. People at school thought she was odd and kept their distance.

It hurt and made her wonder if she just wasn’t cut out for high school. Maybe she deserved to be where she was now, piloting a battered sailboat in the Caribbean instead of attending her junior year back home.

A gust of wind hits them and heels the boat over. The thing is nearly an antique, a ­forty-?­three-?­foot sloop built in the ’70s. It’s about the same size as a yellow school bus and it used to freak her out when the boat rolled with the wind. It felt like they were going to tip over. Now, she leans automatically as the boat rolls. She keeps her hands on the wheel, the gust whistling through the shrouds, and after a moment, the boat slowly lumbers back up.

Her overalls have long since been pushed to the bottom of the cabinet in her berth. Carhartts feel like ­thirty-?­six-?­grit sandpaper on your skin when they’re soaked with salt water. In their place, she’s got on her Caribbean uniform: a threadbare black sports bra, blue polyester shorts, and cheap sunglasses that are so scratched, it’s like looking out of a cloud.

If only Sadie were here, things would be better. She’d be like, What the hell are you wearing? and then tell her exactly what to do and say. Sadie always knew what to do.

Sadie. That is the hardest part, being away from her best friend. Her only friend, actually. She can picture what they’d be doing right now. They’d be on opposite sides of some class with their laptops open. The school gave each kid a computer and said they were empowering the students to make good decisions. Nobody did. Their favorite game was to start a video chat in the middle of class. They turned the sound off and took turns making their faces ugly with filters. Whoever laughed first lost, and usually got busted by the teacher.

Overhead, a cloud passes across the sun, darkening the sea, and Mia feels a tightness in her chest. If she could just talk to her friend, maybe they could work things out. Instead, it’s been nothing but silence since The Incident.

The memories of that day start to crash through her mind like a demolition derby. The school cafeteria. The splat of yogurt and then chicken potpie as Mia hurled them against the wall. She couldn’t even hear herself screaming, she was so angry.

The flapping of the tels on the sail brings her attention back to the boat. The wind has picked up. Mia cranks the mainsail winch, bringing the boom in. Her forearms and biceps are thicker now—?she can see the muscles ripple as she turns the crank. She smiles at the thought of what Sadie would say. She’d call her a brute.

Mia spins the wheel lock, holding their position, and moves past Kaden to an array of silvery glass squares strapped onto the starboard railing. She unclips the boat’s old handheld radio—?a waterproof...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Workshop
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593660307
• ISBN 13: 9780593660300
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 264
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar