Echoing Swamplandial and Tell the Waves I'm Home, a perfect debut for anyone who's navigated the seas of adolescence and lived to tell the tale.

A.Z. McKinney is on the shores of greatness. Now all she needs is a boat.

When the Sea of Santiago appeared overnight in a cow pasture in Arkansas, it seemed to some a religious miracle. But to high school sophomore A.Z. McKinney, it's her chance to make history- as its first oceanographer. All she needs, in the summer of 1989, is to get out on the water. Her plan is easier said than done, since the Sea's eccentric owner is only interested in using it as a tourist destination for beachgoers and devout pilgrims.

A.Z. finally thinks she's found a co-captain and potential boyfriend in the edgy conceptional artist, Kristoff, who seems to want to help her build a boat. But between fighting with her best friend to searching for a tourist-terrorizing alligator (that may or may not be a crocodile) to getting caught between feuding churches and her controling parents, distractions are everywhere.

With her self-determined oceanic destiny on the line, A.Z. finds herself at odds with everything she thought she knew about life, love, and the Sea. To know the truth about the Sea, and what she wants, A.Z. will have to decide whether to sink or float . . . But which one comes first?