The Sea of Tranquility

Katja Millay's debut novel tells the story of two badly damaged teenagers from alternating first-person points of view. Nastya was once bound for a career as a concert pianist; a traumatic event she refuses to discuss left her hand too damaged to ever play again and took her voice along with it — she hasn't spoken a word in more than a year. Starting over in a new town, she means to keep her past buried and everyone else at a distance.

Josh Bennett, seventeen and just as alone, has lost every person in his family and lives by himself in the house they left behind, keeping the world out through sheer discipline. When Nastya insinuates herself into his life anyway, the two form a bond built less on explanation than on the shared relief of being around someone who doesn't ask questions — until the pull between them makes the questions impossible to keep avoiding.

Told in a deliberately slow, introspective register, The Sea of Tranquility is a coming-of-age novel about trauma, grief, and the long, halting work of learning to trust another person again.