The Sea of Tranquility

Nastya Kashnikov is a new girl in a new town, and she wants no one to know her. Not long ago she was headed for a career as a concert pianist. Then something happened that she refuses to discuss. Her hand was damaged beyond playing, and she has not spoken a word in over a year.

Josh Bennett is seventeen and lives alone in the house his family left behind, because every one of them is gone. He keeps the world out through discipline and routine. Nastya pushes her way into his life anyway, and the two settle into a friendship that asks for no explanations.

That ease cannot last. The closer they get, the harder it becomes to go on avoiding what each of them is hiding, and the questions they have both dodged start to press in.

The book is a contemporary young adult novel about trauma and grief, told in alternating first-person chapters, one voice for each of the two teenagers. The pace is deliberately slow and the tone inward, with much of the weight carried by silence and small gestures. Trust comes back in halting steps rather than quick ones, and the story gives it room to do so.