SHARK HEART

A lyrical and daring debut novel about marriage, motherhood, and letting go, this intergenerational love story begins with newlyweds Wren and her husband, Lewis - a man who, over the course of nine months, transforms into a great white shark.

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 a college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds. Woven throughout this bold novel is the story of Wren's mother, Angela, who becomes pregnant with Wren at fifteen in an abusive relationship amidst her parents' crumbling marriage. In the present, all of Wren's grief eventually collides, and she is forced to make an impossible choice.

An emotional exploration of motherhood, marriage, metamorphosis, and letting go, Shark Heart is an unforgettable love story about mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, animals and peopleall while examining what it truly means to be human.

EEmily Habeck is an alumna of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, where she received a BFA in theatre, as well as Vanderbilt Divinity School and Vanderbilt's Peabody College. She is from Ardmore, Oklahoma. Shark Heart is her first novel.