A woman's life and marriage are upended when her husband undergoes a Kafkaesque transformation in Emily Habeck's strikingly poetic, deeply moving first novel, Shark Heart--an Indie Next Pick and New York Times Editors' Choice. Newlyweds Wren and Lewis expect to have a long, happy marriage, until Lewis notices his nose has grown spongy. The doctor diagnoses him with a Carcharodon carcharias mutation, a condition that will cause Lewis to transform into a great white shark and require relocation to the ocean. Wren, who spent her childhood and young adulthood as her mother's caretaker, cobbles together a saltwater pool and teaches herself scuba diving. Lewis's continually progressing condition will push their marriage to the breaking point, and leave them both struggling to find safe harbor in the face of an unimaginable future.
Habeck's world contentedly defies science and logic. This slightly askew setting allows readers the space to fully engage with elements of loss and mortality. Told in a mixture of formats, including prose, poetry, and theatrical scripts, Shark Heart is a profound, lovely, hopeful interrogation of love and humanity. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads