Join the Peabody Institute Library of Danvers for a special event with Mass Book Award-honoree Emily Habeck! Emily will share her gorgeous novel of metamorphosis, marriage, and motherhood, Shark Heart: A Love Story.
A sweeping love story that is at once lyrical and funny, airy and visceral, Shark Heart is an unforgettable novel about life’s perennial questions, the fragility of memories, finding joy amidst grief, and creating a meaningful life. This daring debut, selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice, marks the arrival of a wildly talented new writer abounding with originality, humor, and heart.
For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He will retain most of his consciousness, memories, and intellect, but his physical body will gradually turn into a great white shark. As Lewis develops the features and impulses of one of the most predatory creatures in the ocean, his complicated artist’s heart struggles to make peace with his unfulfilled dreams. At first, Wren internally resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis changes? Then, a glimpse of Lewis’s developing carnivorous nature activates long-repressed memories for Wren, whose story vacillates between her childhood living on a houseboat in Oklahoma, her time with her college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds.
This program is sponsored by the Mass Book Awards Speakers Bureau and is presented in collaboration with the Massachusetts Center for the Book.
Emily Habeck holds a BFA in Theater from Southern Methodist University and master’s degrees from Vanderbilt Divinity School and Vanderbilt’s Peabody College. Her bestselling debut novel, Shark Heart: A Love Story, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, a Book of the Month selection, a finalist for Book of the Year, a Goodreads choice award nominee, and the #1 Indie Next pick for August 2023. In 2024, Shark Heart was also shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, the Kitschies Golden Tentacle Prize, and the Brooklyn Library Book Prize. Emily is from Ardmore, Oklahoma and currently lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
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