Up Through the Water

The first novel from the acclaimed author of Suicide Blonde and Jesus Saves, Up Through the Water is an unusually assured and lyrical debut. Set on an island resort town in North Carolina, it tells of summer people and islanders, mothers and sons, women and men, love and its dangers. It is the story of Emily, a woman free as the waves she swims in every day, of the man who wants to clip her wings, of her son and the summer that he will become a man. George Garrett called it “clean-cut, lean-lined, quickly moving, and audacious . . . [Steinke is] compassionate without sentimentality, romantic without false feelings, and clearly and extravagantly gifted.”