At Sea

What happens when the man you love most in the world, who may be lying about everything, unexpectedly disappears into thin air--or deep water--and takes your small child with him? A riveting and powerful debut about the fierceness of first love and how far one woman will go to learn the painful truth about her family. When Cara and Brendan first meet, she's fresh out of college, recovering from the recent death of her mother and spending time on Martha's Vineyard while trying to figure out her next steps. She's swept away by Brendan's humor and charm and intoxicated by his thrilling, dangerous secret: he claims that he can breathe underwater. He shows Cara his gills. He dives beneath the waves for many minutes at a time. He offers her the most plausible of explanations: that he is a member of the United States Army Special Forces and has undergone top secret experimental surgery. And Cara, struck by the force of his devotion, his unstoppable charisma, and most of all, the casual truth of his claim, believes him. Their summer romance quickly turns serious when Cara gets pregnant. When their son, Micah, is born, she is sure their happy ending is underway. Still, she is forced to contend with Brendan's dramatic moods, and struggles to overlook his unexplained disappearances and the weight of his dangerous secrets. It must be PTSD, and Cara is determined to stay strong for her young family--until he and baby Micah unexpectedly vanish, leaving her desolate and alone. Five years later, Cara is still struggling to move forward, married to another man and trying to rebuild her life, when a local fisherman announces he's spotted a man and small child treading water in Nantucket Sound. The news rekindles Cara's never-abandoned hope that her child may still be alive. As she fights to untangle delusion from reality, and revisits a past she's worked hard to reconcile, she's determined to learn the truth about her lost love and finally find her son.