In contemporary San Francisco, an extended family is transformed by the emerging breakdown of a troubled adolescent boy. The lives of Christopher"s mother, Nan; her lover, Marina; his gay father, Hal; and Hal"s new love interest are pushed to the edge by Christopher"s strange behavior, by something new in him that mystifies them all. When he runs away, far into the woods of northern California, their assumptions about themselves and one another are severely tested. They might not, they discover, be quite as modern as they once thought. Even Christopher"s gift to Marina of three dried seahorses rattles unnervingly to announce a time like no other.

This is a book about love at the very edge, about the things people do out of love that have both redemptive and disastrous consequences, often at the same time. It"s about the unexpected risks of intimacy. It shows how families shatter and re-form under duress; it asks difficult questions that have all the tough complexity of real life. Devastating truths are revealed in the answers.

Michael Cunningham described Tea as "pure and profound, a ravishing book." A Seahorse Year is an even richer, more luminous achievement.