Everything to the Sea - by Alicia Upano (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Part riveting love story, part coming-of-age tale, Everything to the Sea is a breathtaking debut novel spanning years and shores after a sudden tsunami devastates the island of Hawai'i and cuts short a young couple's budding romance--a deeply moving testament to the catastrophes love can endure.

This is how the story goes: Jane will fall in love. And then all of this will vanish.

Home for one final summer, Jane is working and saving cash for her senior year of college before she leaves her island town behind forever. At first, she doesn't remember Kenji, but he quickly becomes someone she can't forget: square jaw, a dimple in his cheek. A Hilo boy. To Kenji, she's Janie, nose perpetually buried in her old high school sketchbooks. Jane tells herself it's only a fling--one perfect, carefree summer, on her way to achieving her dream of becoming an architect and moving to the continent.

Then a tsunami sweeps their families out to sea, and their all-consuming affair breaks with the weight of grief, pulling them in opposite directions. Kenji remains in Hawai'i, bound by duty to rebuild their hometown. Jane, shattered by the loss, follows her best friend to California. For seven years, an ocean lies between them, until Jane and Kenji meet on another coast . . .

In prose that sparkles like sun on the water, Upano's debut novel tells the unforgettable story of two young people as they come of age, fall in love, forge new families, and try to find their way back together, again and again. Everything to the Sea is a moving portrait of our ability to overcome even the most devastating tragedies, when everything else is washed away.

Review Quotes

"Everything to the Sea is an epic and deeply moving love story, as much about how grief changes us as it is about how great love can do the same. In stunning and stylish prose, Alicia Upano follows the aftermath of tragedy--survival, recovery, and transformation--taking up the question of what we owe to the places and people we call home." - Kristiana Kahakauwila, author of This is Paradise
"With all the force of a tidal wave and the tenderness of a romance, Everything to the Sea tells two equally powerful stories of an island community and two young lovers, whose fates are swept together by a tsunami. At once epic and human-scale, this novel places our lives, families, passions, and tragedies within a turbulent landscape. It is compassionate and merciless, beautiful and devastating, honest and ultimately hopeful. Alicia Upano has made an extraordinary debut." - Julia Phillips, bestselling author of Bear and Disappearing Earth
"With equal parts wisdom and wit, Everything to the Sea tells about love as it's felt when frustrated or betrayed in the face of too many other needed and urgent things, and the many ways that one finds family in surprising, beautiful turns. Alicia Upano's striking debut will simultaneously quicken your pulse and force you to slow down, take a deep breath -- this is a life-affirming, heartbreaking novel you won't want to miss." - Jean Chen Ho, author of Fiona and Jane