Description

THIS IS HOW THE STORY OF JANE AND KENJI GOES.
Home in Hilo, Hawai’i for one final summer, Jane is working and saving for her senior year before she leaves her island town behind forever. At first, she doesn’t remember Kenji. To Kenji, she’s unforgettable: Janie, nose perpetually buried in her old high school sketchbooks.

THEY WILL FALL IN LOVE.
Jane tells herself it’s only a fling – one perfect, carefree summer, on her way to achieving her dream of becoming an architect and moving to the continent. But as the days pass, the pair find themselves falling hard into first love.

AND THEN EVERYTHING WILL VANISH.
Then tragedy strikes – when a tsunami destroys much of Hilo, leaving both Jane and Kenji convulsed with grief. While Jane leaves, unable to look back, Kenji stays, bound by duty to rebuild their community.

WHEN ALL IS LOST, HOW DO WE FIND OUR WAY HOME?
Seven years later, Jane and Kenji collide again – and find that the past is not as easily laid to rest as they thought.

A decade-long story of home and belonging, destruction and renewal, betrayal and forgiveness, Everything to the Sea is an unforgettable love story – about what it means to rebuild a life worthy of what was lost.

Publisher Review

With all the force of a tidal wave and the tenderness of a romance, Everything to the Sea tells two equally powerful stories of an island community and two young lovers, whose fates are swept together by a tsunami. At once epic and human-scale, this novel places our lives, families, passions, and tragedies within a turbulent landscape. It is compassionate and merciless, beautiful and devastating, honest and ultimately hopeful. Alicia Upano has made an extraordinary debut -- JULIA PHILLIPS With equal parts wisdom and wit, Everything to the Sea tells about love as it's felt when frustrated or betrayed in the face of too many other needed and urgent things, and the many ways that one finds family in surprising, beautiful turns. Alicia Upano's striking debut will simultaneously quicken your pulse and force you to slow down, take a deep breath - this is a life-affirming, heartbreaking novel you won't want to miss -- JEAN CHEN HO Everything to the Sea is an epic and deeply moving love story, as much about how grief changes us as it is about how great love can do the same. In stunning and stylish prose, Alicia Upano follows the aftermath of tragedy - survival, recovery, and transformation - taking up the question of what we owe to the places and people we call home -- KRISTIANA KAHAKAUWILA