Name: The Highest Tide
ISBN: 9781408800621

Jim Lynch

One unforgettable night, thirteen-year-old Miles goes to the flats near his home in search of shellfish, only to discover something startling and remarkable- a giant squid. Instantly he becomes a local celebrity and is pursued by TV crews urging him to explain the phenomenon. His psychic friend Florence predicts that even more astonishing discoveries are to come, indicators of the highest tide in fifty years. Yet Miles worries more about matters closer to home- will his passion for his ex-babysitter Angie go unrequited? Will his arguing parents divorce? Is everything, even the bay, shifting from him?

A Novel

The Highest Tide

A lovely book. A Winton-esque coming of age, and a whole book dedicated to the liminal ecology in the backwaters of Puget Sound. My Book Of 2026, so far.

Jan Jackson

Julie Rubens

Let me start by saying it’s definitely a really good book! I learned a lot about sea life from it and I really enjoyed how pure and honest it was written. I did find it kind of boring though and probably won’t reread.

Over the course of a single summer, thirteen-year-old Miles O'Malley, a young boy with a fascination for the sea, copes with the trials of growing up, his infatuation with the girl next door, bickering parents, and his fear that his life and his beloved Puget Sound are slipping away from him. A first novel. Reprint.

Jenni Pertuset

So wonderfully well-written. The voice of Miles, the 13-year-old marine-life-expert narrator was spot on. The details in what he says and thinks are even wrong in exactly the right ways. For example, he sees someone practicing "slow-motion karate" and we know both that it's tai chi and that he wouldn't know it's tai chi. The romantic/sexual yearning subplot was unnecessary (and I probably appreciated it far less because without it, this would be a fantastic book to read to my girl) and anemic, though it's inclusion did create some of the tension between Miles as naif and Miles as mature young man. This is especially fascinating as someone who's familiar with the Puget Sound bays and (more common) creatures in Miles's world. And it's delightful to be in the company of an expert who has the expert trait I most value: he explains his area of expertise in an engaging way that acknowledges his audience's intelligence without expecting us to know all the jargon and details that he knows. Very much to Miles' credit and of course to the author's.

The Highest Tide A Novel