by Daniel Kraus
First published 2023
Jay Gardiner straps on his scuba gear and drops into the Pacific Ocean off the California coast looking for something that cannot be found: the remains of his father, who died the year before. The dive feels like penance. Jay has carried guilt since his dad's death, and this long-shot search is the only way he knows to set it down. Then a giant squid appears. Then a sperm whale arrives to feed. Within moments Jay is tangled in tentacles, pulled into the whale's open mouth, and dragged down into the first of its four stomachs. The whale is eighty feet long and weighs sixty tons. Jay's oxygen tanks hold roughly one hour of air. That hour is the entire book. Kraus builds the story on real whale biology, so every chamber Jay moves through, every fluid he fights against, every sound the animal makes is grounded in fact. The science makes it worse, not better. Jay has to solve a physical puzzle with failing gear while the ocean presses in from all sides. He also has to reckon with his father. The two problems turn out to be the same problem. A USA Today bestseller and NPR Best Book of 2023.
Genres: survival, literary-fiction, adventure, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller
Vibes: claustrophobic, harrowing, intense, introspective, thought-provoking, visceral
Tropes: internal-reckoning, man-versus-nature, physical-and-emotional-journey, ticking-clock
Setting: Pacific Ocean, California
Period: 21st-century, contemporary
336 pages · Paperback · MTV Books
Content warnings: death