The Highest Tide, a novel, by James Lynch (Bloomsbury, USA, 2005)

One moonlit night, thirteen-year-old Miles O’Malley slips out of his house, packs up his kayak and goes exploring on the flats of Puget Sound. But what begins as a routine hunt for starfish, snails and clams turns into a televised spectacle after Miles finds a rare deep-sea creature stranded in the mud. When he continues to discover more exotic ocean life in the quiet backwater bays near his Olympia home, Miles becomes a local sensation. Soon he is shadowed on the flats by people curious as to whether he is just an observant boy or an unlikely prophet.

While the sea continues to offer up discoveries from its mysterious depths, Miles navigates the equally mysterious passage out of childhood. He clumsily courts his former babysitter, nurses his elderly psychic friend and searches for the words that will keep his parents together.

And as the days shorten and the water begins to rise, his summer-long attempt to understand the muddy flats becomes an examination of life itself, and this enchanting debut novel about obsession and natural wonder surges toward an unforgettable ending.

Accolades:

The Highest Tide won a 2006 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and has been a regional bestseller since coming out in September 2005. It has also been published in more than 20 countries and translated into six languages so far.

Library Journal has chosen The Highest Tide as one of its best first novelists books of the year.  It was a Border's Original Voices choice and a BookSense pick for fiction as well.

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