We Carry the Sea in Our Hands

Told with poetic prose and an imaginative voice, this “beautifully composed [and] original” (Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times bestselling author) debut novel explores family, trauma, and belonging through one woman’s journey to reconnect with her roots.

“We Carry the Sea in Our Hands is a brilliant accomplishment, beautifully composed, stylistically inventive, conceptually imaginative and original ... it is a complex, layered text in which present action is braided together with a poignant backstory of quarrelsome adoptive parents, loving surrogate parents, and an intense friendship.”
—Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times bestselling author of Blonde

“Janie Kim’s We Carry the Sea in our Hands is a brilliant, poetic dance between the worlds of art and science that explores a young woman’s coming of age/coming to consciousness. In this deftly articulate first novel, Kim explores intimate and essential questions about family, identity, biological imperative, and the mythology of the self. A braided narrative that brings together science, nature, and grief, We Carry the Sea in Our Hands is a haunting celebration of the preciousness of life and our relationships to both what is known and what remains mysterious within us and within the world around us.”
—A.M. Homes, author of The Unfolding

Hardcover | $29.99
Published by Alcove Press
July 09, 2024
336 Pages
ISBN 978-1-6391-0753-7