What the Waves Know

In the tradition of Sue Monk Kidd and Beth Hoffman comes a compelling debut novel about a young womans quest to find herselfand her voiceon the island where she lost both.The tiny state of Rhode Island is home to even tinier Tillings Islandwhich witnessed the biggest event of Izabella Rae Haywoods life. For it was there, on Izs sixth birthday, that her father left...and took her voice with him.Eight years later in the summer of 1974, Izs mother is through with social workers, psychiatrists and her daughters silence. In one last attempt to return Izs voice, the motley pair board the ferry to Tillings in hopes that the journey will help Izabella heal herself by piecing together splintered memories of the day her words fled.But heartbreak is a difficult puzzle to solve, and everyone in Tillings seems to know something Iz does not. Worse, each has an opinion about Izabellas dreamer of a father, the undercurrents of whose actions have spun so many lives off course.Now, as the islands annual Yemay festival prepares to celebrate the ties that bind mothers to children, lovers to each other, and humankind to the sea, Izabella must unravel the tangled threads of her own history and reclaim a voice gone silentor risk losing herselfand any chance she may have for a futureto the past.What the Waves Know is a moving, magical novel that asks us to consider the stories which tell the truth and the stories we tell ourselves.