The Line Tender by Kate Allen

This book!  It's so hard to put in to words what I feel about Kate Allen's debut novel, The Line Tender.  It was such a beautiful journey in the life of twelve year old Lucy Everhart.  It is my favorite book I have read this year and I'm not afraid to say that it brought a tear (or two) to my eyes, in the best way possible.  I kept seeing people talk about this book on Twitter and also noticed that it had received 7 (!!!) starred reviews.  Plus, the main character's name is Lucy, so I had to read it.  And I am so thankful that I did.

The Line Tender is the story of Lucy Everhart, a girl that lost her mother 5 years prior.  But thanks to her dad, Fred (her best friend), and an interesting old neighbor, she has stayed afloat in her town of Rockport, Massachusetts.  When a local fisherman hauls in a great white shark, it starts the summer off with a bang.  Lucy's mother loved the ocean and great white sharks in particular.  In fact, it was while she was on a boat tracking these sharks that Lucy's mother suddenly died.  With a rash of new sightings in the Cape Cod area, Lucy and Fred have a new summer adventure.  But when tragedy strikes Lucy again, she must find a way to deal with the enormous grief.  By diving in to her mother's work, a research proposal she never got to finish, Lucy is able to start to piece together the mom she never really got a chance to know.  And in discovering the things that tethered her mother in place, she learns along the way how she will handle her new reality.  By learning about her past, she is given a chance to handle her grief and move forward with an even greater appreciation for those that are closest to her.  

From Amazon:

Funny, poignant, and deeply moving, The Line Tender is a story of nature's enduring mystery and a girl determined to find meaning and connection within it.

Wherever the sharks led, Lucy Everhart's marine-biologist mother was sure to follow. In fact, she was on a boat far off the coast of Massachusetts, collecting shark data when she died suddenly. Lucy was seven. Since then Lucy and her father have kept their heads above water--thanks in large part to a few close friends and neighbors. But June of her twelfth summer brings more than the end of school and a heat wave to sleepy Rockport. On one steamy day, the tide brings a great white--and then another tragedy, cutting short a friendship everyone insists was "meaningful" but no one can tell Lucy what it all meant. To survive the fresh wave of grief, Lucy must grab the line that connects her depressed father, a stubborn fisherman, and a curious old widower to her mother's unfinished research on the Great White's return to Cape Cod. If Lucy can find a way to help this unlikely quartet follow the sharks her mother loved, she'll finally be able to look beyond what she's lost and toward what's left to be discovered.