It's summer, and 13 year old, four-foot eight-inch, stature-challenged Miles O'Malley is doing what he loves best - combing the tidal beaches of the Puget Sound in the middle of the night. The Nisqually Earthquake is about to shake up his home town of Olympia, Washington. His obsession of all things aquatic and the lust of the girl next door is about to turn his life upside down. Poetic, yet lean, lucid, and disarmingly funny, The Highest Tide is a stunning look into the sea of change that adolescence brings on, and an intelligent, fascinating peek under the coastal waters of the Puget Sound -- a sure highlight for all Northwesterners.