A Seahorse Year

A San Francisco family copes with a teenage son's mental illness in "a wonderful book, with characters that bounce off the page" (Elizabeth Strout).
Named a Best Book of the Year by Newsday and the San Francisco Chronicle

In this "profound, heart-wrenching, and resonant" Lambda Award–winning novel, a quintessentially modern family is transformed by the mental breakdown of their adolescent son (Francisco Goldman).

When Christopher disappears from his San Francisco home, his extended family comes together in a frantic search. But the sixteen-year-old is in much more trouble than they know, and their attempts to both support and save him will challenge their assumptions about themselves and one another. In "unflinching prose that's both descriptive and soulful," Stacey D'Erasmo explores the ways in which love moves us to actions that have both redemptive and disastrous consequences—sometimes in the same heartbeat (Time Out New York).

"Open A Seahorse Year and be mesmerized," raved the Advocate of this exquisitely crafted novel that is "both deeply satisfying and quietly subversive" (The New York Times Book Review). A winner of the Ferro-Grumley Award for Fiction and other honors, A Seahorse Year is "a stunning achievement" (Suzan Sherman).

"[D'Erasmo] writes with a graceful, sometimes devastating directness, in clear, crisp phrases lined with subtle lyricism." —The Boston Globe

"Alternating perspectives and controlled, nuanced writing bring depth and compassion to each character . . . [and] make D'Erasmo an author to watch." —Library Journal

"After turning a page or two of A Seahorse Year you'll know you're into something special." —Out magazine