Chaucer’s Books Talk: Author Steve Hawk with Filmmaker Chris Malloy

Chaucer’s Books (3321 State Street)  hosts Steve Hawk for a book talk and signing of his novel Nearshore.  Joining the author in discussion is award-winning filmmaker Chris Malloy.

Daybreak. West Virginia. A “small” nuclear bomb detonates beside an Appalachian highway. The weapon’s explosive yield is meager, the death count blessedly low. And yet: It is history’s first act of nuclear terrorism, and it threatens to tilt the world beyond reckoning.

Months later, surfer and lifeguard Jamie Palmer is patrolling his domain, a treacherous stretch of wild California coast, when he responds to a mysterious nearshore boating accident that jettisoned two people overboard. The victims turn out to be Palmer’s best friend—a brilliant, renegade Stanford University professor—and the man’s teenage son, Luca. The professor drowns; Luca survives—leaving Palmer as the boy’s guardian.

Soon after, Chelsea Wu, a math prodigy and doctoral student, confides in Palmer that she and the professor unearthed a link between a Silicon Valley megacorporation, its sociopathic billionaire founder, and the nuke in West Virginia. When a second device is detonated, this unlikely team—the surfer, the orphan, and the math whiz—must persuade investigators that the bombmakers are not only homegrown but also hiding in plain sight.

An immersive and disturbingly plausible debut, Steve Hawk’s debut novel, Nearshore, moves with the speed of a barreling wave, exploring deeper collisions: isolation versus community and family, Silicon Valley versus humanity, words versus action, land versus sea.

“Engrossing, graceful, and transporting, this is a terrific—if terrifying—tale of near apocalypse.”  Publishers Weekly

“Nearshore is the best novel of homegrown nuclear terrorism yet written—chillingly credible, terrifying, and all too plausible.”  Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb

About the Author

Steve Hawk is the former editor of Surfer, Sierra, and Stanford Business magazines, and ofsurfline.com. His first book, Waves, explores the science and aesthetics of ocean waves. He is currently co-writing a book with his brother, Tony Hawk, about the history and culture of skateboarding. He lives near Half Moon Bay, California, where he spends as much time as possible frolicking in the ocean. Nearshore is his first novel.