Fiction Five: Dazzling Debuts

With spring just around the corner let's celebrate new beginnings with new authors. I'm highlighting five wonderfully unique fiction debuts.

Upward Bound by Woody Brown

Upward Bound is not a place anyone dreams of spending their days. The dreary adult daycare center for Los Angeles's disabled community is, for many of its clients and staff, a place of last resort. This includes Carlos, a young aide who lost his mother as a boy and now works alongside his beloved sister Mariana. Jorge is a gentle nonspeaking giant whom Carlos seeks to befriend and prevent from escaping. Tom is a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy who pines for Ann, the summer lifeguard at the center's pool who feels out of her depth. Dave, Upward Bound’s director came to L.A. to pursue an acting career but now channels his passion into staging an overly ambitious holiday show starring the center's irrepressible clients.

Framing these intertwined narratives and connecting them in surprising, shattering ways is the riveting and sometimes ironic testimony of Walter. He's a recent community college graduate who, after a family tragedy, must return to the company of his disabled peers.

“Brown—who was the first nonspeaking autistic graduate of UCLA—offers a vanishingly rare glimpse of the interiority of nonverbal autistic adults and a critique of the well-meaning but often misguided able-bodied people in their orbits. . . . Full of humor and charm . . . a debut novel that truly breaks new ground.” — Kirkus Reviews

The Fountain by Casey Scieszka

Vera Van Vulkenburgh hasn’t been home in 188 years. But now Vera, forever 26 and able to heal from any wound, has returned to the Catskills. Whatever made her family immortal happened here and if she can uncover it, maybe she can reverse it. After nearly two centuries, an endless sequence of unnoticed, meaningless lives, and a soul-shaking incident in the desert she longs to be released.

Posing as a newly arrived forest ranger, she quickly blends in at the upstate community. Vera learns of a mysterious, well-funded company that is snapping up local property, no matter how high the asking price. But when her brother, a fellow immortal shows up, accompanied by a woman whose face is incredibly familiar to Vera, the purpose for her return gets clouded. Vera is in a race against time to find out what has caused her condition before someone else does.

"Casey Scieszka's debut novel is absolutely delicious, like Tuck Everlasting for grown-ups. The premise is so good—an immortal woman's search for the fountain of youth—that the writing, crisp and funny, feels like an extra treat. An excellent debut." —Emma Straub, bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow

Under Water by Tara Menon

After Marissa loses her mother at 5, the most intimate relationship of her life begins. Her marine biologist father, determined to channel his grief into completing his wife’s research, whisks Marissa across the globe to Thailand. There she meets Arielle and a fairy tale friendship takes hold.

During the week the girls live at the resort owned by Arielle’s parents. On the weekends they join the tight-knit community of researchers on a nearby island. Together the girls discover the fragile wonders of its reefs, forests and beaches. They learn to dive into the deep, holding their breath for minutes at a time, as effortlessly synchronized as the manta rays they come to know by name. The girls learn to swim their way out of danger until a wave comes that Arielle can’t outpace. Marissa is gutted with loss.

Years later Marissa is in New York adrift and haunted by the memory of her friend. Over the course of two fateful days, as another cataclysm approaches the city and the past comes flooding back, she discovers how to sustain herself in a precarious world.

“A novel of remarkable delicacy and power, Under Water is about grief, friendship, home, and longing. Menon writes exquisite sentences, sensual and particular, each containing an entire world.” — Katie Kitamura, author of Audition and Intimacies

All Carry by Gene Wojciechowski

Joe is a golf reporter who’s missed more Father’s Days than he cares to count because that’s when he has to cover the U.S.Open. But his son Buddy has counted every single one.

Joe and Buddy’s relationship is fractured at best. Then one day at a garage sale Buddy finds a woefully obsolete set of golf clubs that supposedly belonged to Jack Nicklaus. He decides to give them to his father as an olive branch. When Joe takes the clubs out on a whim, he discovers something unbelievable: he’s hitting 400 yards. No one hits the ball that far, not Tiger, not Nicklaus.

Max “Hard Way” Mitchell knows golf perhaps better than anyone. He used to be one of the best caddies on the PGA Tour. But he was run out of town after sleeping with a golf pro’s wife. Now he’s the owner of a run-down driving range, his glory days slipping away. 

When Joe’s golf channel lays him off Hard Way convinces Joe to do the seemingly impossible — win the Masters as an amateur. Too do this they'll need each other.

“This wonderful tale is for all lovers of golf, especially the weekend hackers with embarrassing handicaps (like me). Now we have hope. If we can just find the magic clubs.” –John Grisham

The Shock of the Light by Lori Inglis Hall

Cambridge, 1942: Twins Tessa and Theo are each eager to do their part in the war. Theo is recruited by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and disappears into the skies. Tessa jumps at the chance to join the Special Operations Executive (the SOE), which is devoted to spying and sabotage in German-occupied France. It will be dangerous, highly classified work, but Tessa is no stranger to secret-keeping.

Two years later Theo comes home. Tessa does not. Theo, a clandestinely gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal, is physically wounded and emotionally broken by the deaths of his fellows and the disappearance of his sister. He is angry and cannot stop pursuing answers about Tessa’s fate, even though he will pay a steep price for his quest.

Years later, PhD candidate Edie is deep into her research on the SOE, which leads her to Theo. The old man and young scholar form an unlikely partnership and together they finally uncover the truth about Theo’s beloved sister. It's a truth that stretches all the way back to the summer Tessa spent in France before the war had even begun. 

“A beautifully constructed and profoundly moving portrait of a brother and sister separated by the secrets of war, The Shock of the Light is an astonishing achievement.” — Lauren Grodstein, New York Times bestselling author of We Must Not Think of Ourselves