The Highest Tide

A budding marine biologist comes of age in this poignant tale set in a small shoreside town in the state of Washington. Miles, an intelligent, sensitive, small-for-his-age 13-year-old beachcomber, escapes his insomnia, his parents' semi-benign neglect, and his overpowering crush on his former babysitter, troubled 18-year-old Angie Stegner, by going on late-night specimen-collecting expeditions in Skookumchuck Bay, just off the Pacific Ocean. One of these expeditions garners Miles a great deal of entirely unwanted media attention when he discovers a giant squid stranded on a mudflat, far from its home in the deep water.