THE QUIET AND THE LOUD

A heartbreaking, hopeful, and timely novel about holding too tight to family secrets, healing from trauma, and falling in love.

George's life is loud. On the water, though, with everything hushed above and below, she is steady, silent. Then her estranged dad says he needs to talk, and George's past begins to wake up, looping around her ankles, trying to drag her under. But there is no time to sink. George's best friend Tess is about to become, officially, a teen mom, her friend Laz is in despair about the climate crisis, her Gramps would literally misplace his teeth if not for her, and her moms fill the house with fuss and chatter. Before long, heat and smoke join the noise as distant wildfires begin to burn. George tries to stay steady. When her father tells her his news and the past roars back to life, it's to Calliope, the girl who has just cartwheeled into her world and shot it through with colors, that George turns. And it's here George would stay quiet and safe, if she could. But then, Tess has her baby, and the earth burns hotter, and the past just will not stay put. A novel about the contours of friendship, family, forgiveness, trauma, and love, and about our hopeless, hopeful world, Helena Fox's gorgeous follow-up to How It Feels to Float explores the stories we suppress and the stories we speak and the healing that comes when we let ourselves voice the secrets we've carried so long. Helena Fox's debut novel, How It Feels To Float, recently won the 2020 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Young Adult Literature. It has also won the Victorian Premiers Literary Award for Writing for Young Adults and has been shortlisted for the CBCA Book Awards, the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and the Queensland Literary Awards. Helena lives by the sea in Wollongong, Australia, where she mentors young writers and runs workshops on writing and mental health. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College