Daybreak, West Virginia: A 'small' nuclear bomb detonates beside an Appalachia highway. The weapon's explosive yield is meager, the death count blessedly low. And yet-it is history's first act of nuclear terrorism, and it threatens to tilt the world beyond reckoning. Months later, surfer and lifeguard Jamie Palmer is patrolling his domain, a treacherous stretch of wild California coast, when he responds to a mysterious nearshore boating accident that has jettisoned two people overboard. The victims turn out to be Palmer's best friend-a brilliant, renegade Stanford University professor-and the man's teenage son, Luca. The professor drowns, Luca survives-leaving Palmer the boy's guardian. Soon after, Chelsea Wu, a math prodigy and doctoral student, confides to Palmer that she and the professor unearthed a link between a Silicon Valley megacorporation, its sociopathic billionaire founder, and the nuke in West Virginia. When a second device is detonated, this unlikely team-the surfer, the orphan, and the math whiz-must persuade investigators that the bombmakers are not only homegrown, but also hiding in plain sight. An immersive and disturbingly plausible debut, Nearshore delivers a mix of literary suspense and coastal noir. Moving with the speed of a barreling wave, Nearshore also explores deeper clashes: isolation versus community and family, Silicon Valley versus humanity, words versus action, land versus sea.
