Seahorse Year

In Stacey D’Erasmo’s acclaimed second novel, a quintessentially modern family is ultimately transformed by the emerging breakdown of their teenaged son, Christopher. When he disappears from his San Francisco home, his extended family comes together in a frantic search. But Christopher is in much more trouble than they know, and their attempts to support him and to save him will challenge their assumptions about themselves and one another.

Exquisitely crafted, A Seahorse Year is an absorbing read that explores the ways in which love moves us to actions that have both redemptive and disastrous consequences, sometimes in the same heartbeat.

"A Seahorse Year compellingly explores love's connections and limits . . . [D'Erasmo] writes with a graceful, sometimes devastating directness, in clear, crisp phrases lined with subtle lyricism."—Boston Globe

"Beautiful, addictive . . . an elegant, glancing humor flecks the book . . . wonderfully observed ."—Newsday

"You could read Stacey D'Erasmo for the subtlety of her insights or the beauty of her language or for her tumbling, shifting arrangements of plot and characters . . . Or you could just open A Seahorse Year and be mesmerized."—The Advocate

Stacey D'Erasmo is the author of the novel Tea, which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and a Book Sense 76 Pick. A Seahorse Year, her second novel, was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. She lives in New York City.

In Stacey D’Erasmo’s acclaimed second novel, a quintessentially modern family is ultimately transformed by the emerging breakdown of their teenaged son, Christopher. When he disappears from his San Francisco home, his extended family comes together in a frantic search. But Christopher is in much more trouble than they know, and their attempts to support him and to save him will challenge their assumptions about themselves and one another.

Exquisitely crafted, A Seahorse Year is an absorbing read that explores the ways in which love moves us to actions that have both redemptive and disastrous consequences, sometimes in the same heartbeat.

"A Seahorse Year compellingly explores love's connections and limits . . . [D'Erasmo] writes with a graceful, sometimes devastating directness, in clear, crisp phrases lined with subtle lyricism." -- Boston Globe

"Beautiful, addictive . . . an elegant, glancing humor flecks the book . . . wonderfully observed ." -- Newsday

"You could read Stacey D'Erasmo for the subtlety of her insights or the beauty of her language or for her tumbling, shifting arrangements of plot and characters . . . Or you could just open A Seahorse Year and be mesmerized." -- The Advocate

Stacey D'Erasmo is the author of the novel Tea, which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and a Book Sense 76 Pick. A Seahorse Year, her second novel, was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. She lives in New York City.

Stacey D’Erasmo is the author of the novels Tea, (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year); and A Seahorse Year, which was named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday, and won a Lambda Literary Award. She was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction from 1995-1997. Her essays, features, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and Ploughshares. She is currently an assistant professor of writing at Columbia University.

The New York Times - Margot Livesey

Like Byatt and Shields, D'Erasmo is too interested in conveying the texture of lived experience to reach a neat conclusion. Certain aspects of her characters remain properly mysterious, and the novel's ending leaves them, as it should, in the midst of their lives. But what is abundantly clear throughout is D'Erasmo's talent and intelligence. A Seahorse Year succeeds in being both deeply satisfying and quietly subversive.

STACEY D'ERASMO is the author of the novels Tea, a New York Times Notable Book, and A Seahorse Year, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year and a Lambda Literary Award winner. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and Ploughshares. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction, she is currently an assistant professor of writing at Columbia University. She lives in New York.