WINNER OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST BOOKSELLER AWARD The unforgettable international bestseller and ode to the Pacific Northwest, “an irresistible coming-of-age fable, dappled with lyricism, briny honesty, and good humor.” ( Los Angeles Times ) One moonlit night, thirteen-year-old Miles O'Malley, a speed-reading, Rachel Carson-obsessed insomniac out looking for tidal specimens in Puget Sound, discovers a giant squid stranded on the beach. As the first person to see a giant squid alive, he finds himself hailed as a prophet. But Miles is really just a kid on the verge of growing up, infatuated with the girl next door, worried that his bickering parents will divorce, and fearful that everything, even the bay he loves, is shifting away from him. As the sea continues to offer up discoveries from its mysterious depths, Miles struggles to deal with the difficulties that attend the equally mysterious process of growing up. “A celebratory song of the sea.” ― Kirkus “Graceful and inventive . . . [Lynch's] declarative style and vivid imagery allow the science of the ocean to blend easily with its poetry . . . [He allows] his portrait of the seas to be its own argument for ecological protection without preachy rhetoric.” ― New York Times Book Review “An irresistible coming-of-age fable, dappled with lyricism, briny honesty and good humor. It's as if [Rachel] Carson herself (or, say, John McPhee) had turned to fiction, bringing an exacting sense of the ebb and flow of nature to the story of one largely unsupervised boy and the exploration of his surroundings.” ― Los Angeles Times “In stunning prose, author Jim Lynch puts sea life into a kaleidoscope where swirling shapes burst and reconfigure in continuous life-affirming wonder . . . The balance of elegance, groundedness and style is remarkable.” ― San Francisco Chronicle “Unforgettable . . . [A] classic coming-of-age story, told with wry writ and quirky mating-marine-life facts.” ― Seattle Times “The fertile strangeness of marine tidal life becomes a subtly executed metaphor for the bewilderments of adolescence in this tender and authentic coming-of-age novel.” ― Publishers Weekly, starred review “In his superb first novel, Olympia's Jim Lynch has achieved a unique literary Triple Crown: 1) best coming-of-age novel set in the Pacific Northwest in recent memory; 2) best novel to resurrect the writing of the visionary Rachel Carson; 3) best novel to educate people about that mysteriously awesome place where freshwater meets the sea.” ― Oregonian “The kind of novel that book clubs live for, heartwarming, but not unsophisticated.” ― Detroit Free Press Jim Lynch is the bestselling author of The Highest Tide , Border Songs , Truth Like the Sun , and Before the Wind, three of which have been adapted for the stage. A graduate of the University of Washington, his books have won the Indie Choice Honor Book Award, the Washington State Book Award for Fiction, and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. He lives and sails in Olympia, Washington with his wife and daughter. Used Book in Good Condition