One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father, Serk, take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town. Hours later, Louisa wakes on the beach, soaked to the skin.

Her father is missing: presumably drowned. This sudden event shatters their small family. As Louisa and her American mother return to the US, Serk’s disappearance reverberates across time and space, and the mystery of what really happened that night slowly unravels.

A Book of the Year for the Guardian, Time, New Yorker, Esquire, Vanity Fair, FT and Barack Obama.

Format: Paperback
Published: 2026
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
Pages: 528
Language: English
ISBN 10: 1529932513
ISBN 13: 9781529932515