Happy Tuesday and welcome to my stop on the blog tour for THE EPIC STORY OF EVERY LIVING THING! I’m so excited because today I have an interview with Deb Caletti to share with you! This book is truly amazing and I’m so excited to for you to find out more about it!
The Epic Story of Every Living Thing by Deb Caletti Published on September 13, 2022 by Labyrinth Road
Genres: Contemporary, YA
Pages: 416
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From the award-winning author of Honey, Baby, Sweetheart comes a gorgeous and fiercely feminist young adult novel. When a teen travels to Hawaii to track down her sperm donor father, she discovers the truth about him, about the sunken shipwreck that’s become his obsession, and most of all about herself.
Harper Proulx has lived her whole life with unanswered questions about her anonymous sperm donor father. She's convinced that without knowing him, she can't know herself. When a chance Instagram post connects Harper to a half sibling, that connection yields many more and ultimately leads Harper to uncover her father's identity.
So, fresh from a painful breakup and still reeling with anxiety that reached a lifetime high during the pandemic, Harper joins her newfound half siblings on a voyage to Hawaii to face their father. The events of that summer, and the man they discover—a charismatic deep-sea diver obsessed with solving the mystery of a fragile sunken shipwreck—will force Harper to face some even bigger questions: Who is she? Is she her DNA, her experiences, her successes, her failures? Is she the things she loves—or the things she hates? Who she is in dark times? Who she might become after them?
What would you do if you spent the day with Harper? Where would you go to eat, hang out, relax, etc.?
You know, I pretty much have spent the day with Harper! Many of them, over the year of writing the book. That’s what it feels like, anyway, as a novel develops. So, I think we’d spend the time as we already have: at the beach, in Maui. We’d eat at Mr. and Mrs. Nuu’s place, the PP Shack (pork and poke!), or at Bob Alualu and his wife Maureen’s Surfside Restaurant. We’d definitely go out on Beau and Greer’s boat, and we’d definitely swim.
If Harper were to hang out with other fictional characters, who would they be and why?
I think she’d like Mads and Billy from my book, Essential Maps for the Lost. Also, Jade, from The Nature of Jade. They all live very close to each other, in basically the same neighborhood of Seattle.
If there was one fictional place you could travel to for a day, where would it be and why?
Narnia. I’d like to begin by having tea with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver in their snug house. Why? For the chance to walk through a wardrobe and be transported to an enchanted land.
If you buried a time capsule with three items inside, what three items would you choose and why?
An iPhone (what else?!). Some strange, telling food from Trader Joe’s, like a low carb Keto pizza, with a crust made from ground chicken and egg whites (which makes an appearance in The Epic Story of Every Living Thing, haha!). A screenshot of Kamala as our first female vice-president. Let’s hope that won’t seem so remarkable in the future.
What was your favorite bit of research you ended up not using?
I did SO much research on this one. I loved learning about life on board a ship in the late 1800’s, especially life as a captain’s wife. Also, many, many jellyfish facts!
What is your favorite quote, scene, or moment from The Epic Story of Every Living Thing?
One of my most favorite scenes is when Harper takes the literal plunge beneath the surface, down under the ocean, and connects to something incredible: wonder. She also meets some astonishing creatures – a huge collection firework jellyfish:
“Oh, wow, wow. It’s such an extraordinary sight that it’s almost dreamlike. They are wondrous, this mass of pink-purple light, so wondrous that Harper is filled with that rare all-of-life feeling, where you’re a witness to the whole of it, the grand tapestry. Those jellyfish have been here since the beginning of time, going through stuff, surviving stuff, and somewhere in there, that trigger fish entered the scene, and then that spotted puffer did, and the whale shark, and all the rest of them, one by one, same as their wreck had joined the millions of other wrecks down here, going as far back as those ancient canoes.
And right then, with all of those breathtaking creatures in front of her, Harper is sure of it, absolutely sure, that every living being has its own, heroic story, and together are telling a single, whole story, a long story, about oceans, earth, and sky, about volcanoes and plagues and tidal waves and wreckage and storms and tragedies. A story of endurance and courage and connection and resilience and love. And she is sure, as well, that she has a place in that story, and she should never forget that. She should never miss that. She feels so… consoled by this, the going onward-ness of life, and her own going onward-ness. She feels so hopeful, as she watches the exquisite pink-purple hula, right where Mary’s story also sits, and where she herself now paddles quietly.”
About Deb Caletti
Deb Caletti is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of nearly twenty books for adults and young adults, including Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, a finalist for the National Book Award, and A Heart in a Body in the World, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. Her books have also won the Josette Frank Award for Fiction, the Washington State Book Award, and numerous other state awards and honors, and she was a finalist for the PEN USA Award. She lives with her family in Seattle.
What do you think about The Epic Story of Every Living Thing? Have you added it to your tbr yet? Let me know in the comments and have a splendiferous day!
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