Praise for The Ocean Above Me
Longtime war journalist Kevin Sites crafts an edge-of-your-seat story that is part “MacGyver” and part “Perfect Storm” with well-developed and introspective characters. “The Ocean Above Me” mines the survival skills Sites honed in real-life war zones with a gripping plot and prose that hums with humanity.
— Beth Macy, New York Times bestselling author of Dopesick and Raising Lazarus
“The Ocean Above Me is an intense and powerful novel about losing one’s way and then finding it again in the unlikeliest of places. I found it moving, thought-provoking and gripping in equal measure.”
— Ian McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of The North Water
“An unforgettable story of guilt and survival that is also a nail-biting thriller… Sites has crafted a profound exploration of a war correspondent’s dark secret and the toll that holding onto it has taken in his life. The plot is ingenious and the hero’s path to redemption is both stirring and unique.”
— Peter Maass, Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning Author of Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War
“Absolutely riveting. Sites grabs you by the throat and pulls you under in chapter one and you won’t resurface until long after this story ends. A profound, heart-pounding journey to the edge of life and death, filled with unique characters who leap off the page. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
— Richard Murphy, Author of Confessions of a Contractor
Kevin Sites has produced a richly suspenseful page-turner filled with believable characters and a plot that keeps you hanging on until the very end. The submerged story-line speaks gracefully to the lingering trauma and scars from wars long forgotten except by those who were there. Only an accomplished war correspondent like Sites could produce a thriller so unique and genuinely authentic. Once you start reading this book, it’s hard to put it down.
— Keith B. Richburg, Author of Out of America; A Black Man Confronts Africa
Sites’ first work of fiction is more terrifying and claustrophobic than his years of reporting from wars. Set in a small space the novel ranges far and wide in the mind of the protagonist. A read in one sitting journey that you will not put down.
— Robert Young Pelton, Author of The World’s Most Dangerous Places and Licensed to Kill
Longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s 2023 First Novel Prize and Order Now!
BOOKS
Former war correspondent Lukas Landon is alone, trapped under 150-feet of water in an overturned shrimp trawler at the bottom of the ocean. The only thing keeping him alive is an air bubble in the ship’s bow. But the water level is rising, and time is running out. Landon doesn’t know if he will survive . . . or if he even deserves to.
After years of covering bloody battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, Landon’s once promising life took a steep nosedive. But he may have found a path to redemption: a series of in-depth stories on the Philomena, the rarest of South Carolina shrimp boats skippered by decorated former army sergeant Clarita Esteban.
A Black woman struggling to survive in a white man’s world, Clarita has assembled a crew of misfits as deeply wounded as herself; a Cuban first mate who came to America during the Mariel boatlift and his troubled younger cousin; a quiet Haitian cook with a secret black book; a deckhand from the ship’s former crew, the only man willing to work for a Black female skipper; and Clarita’s daughter, who lost a college basketball scholarship to an injury.
As Landon slowly earns the disparate crew’s trust, uncovering their pasts—and how each landed aboard this rusty bucket of bolts with its own shaded history—he keeps his own story and the events that unmoored the foundation of his life a secret. But when catastrophe strikes—leaving him twenty-fathoms deep in exquisite isolation—Landon has no one to question but himself. Will he finally come clean? And if he does, will he make it out alive from this 110-ton steel tomb under the sea to finally tell the truth to those who need to hear it?
A thrilling fight for survival and a poignant story of loss and redemption, The Ocean Above Me is a literary masterpiece that explores the effects of trauma, the pain of forgiveness, and the light of love that burns in the darkest depths.
PRAISE FOR SWIMMING WITH WARLORDS, FROM AUTHOR/JOURNALIST KEVIN SITES:
“Kevin Sites is one of our national treasures—a fearless correspondent who has devoted himself to documenting not just the facts of war, but also its deepest emotional textures. Here is a thinking, feeling eyewitness to history who knows the perverse excitement of battle, but who questions every raw experience with plangent curiosity. Read Swimming With Warlords and you will never think of Afghanistan, or America’s ragged entanglements there, in the same way again.”
Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers and In the Kingdom of Ice
“…gripping and poignant.”
Kirkus Reviews
PRAISE FOR IN THE HOT ZONE
“…instead of telling us what we already know, he has done something remarkable, delivering the sort of fresh and insightful human stories from that conflict that we seldom hear. Sites is actually telling us something new.”
Columbia Journalism Review
PRAISE FOR THINGS THEY CANNOT SAY
“The book largely does what good books should: whisper secrets to the world.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“The Things They Cannot Say is a vivid set of portraits of modern combatants written with prose that moves with speed and heat.”
Edward Tick, Author, War and the Soul and Co-Director of A Soldier’s Heart
“This powerful book captures a grim reality many soldiers face after combat.”
Business Insider
“Riveting and emotionally raw … These gripping stories … are evidence of a profound desire to heal.”
Publisher’s Weekly
ABOUT
He’s the author of three non-fiction books on war, all published by Harper Perennial.
These include:
• In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars.
• Swimming with Warlords: A Dozen-Year Journey Across the Afghan War
• The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War
His debut novel, The Ocean Above Me will be published by Harper in summer 2023.
* Photograph by Ben Brody
BLOG
The Ocean Above Me Tops 2024 American Fiction Awards and American Legacy Book Awards in “Thriller Categories.”
Sites’s debut novel took top spots in Fiction Psychological Thriller categories for both the American Fiction Awards and The American Legacy Book Awards. The critically acclaimed book continues to gain momentum having been previously longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s Debut Novel Prize.
What the film ‘Civil War’ got right (and wrong) about war correspondents
“Keeping in mind that no entertainment medium usually gets a profession completely right, both the accurate and troubling depictions of journalists and journalism in Civil War provide me with a worthy excuse for examining just how one niche, war reporting, actually works.”
Author Event: Powell’s City of Books presents Kevin Sites on his debut novel, The Ocean Above Me
Author Event: Powell’s City of Books presents Kevin Sites on his debut novel, The Ocean Above Me
The Center for Fiction longlists The Ocean Above Me for 2023 First Novel Prize
“We are pleased to announce the longlist for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize.”
Today’s the day! 7-11-Kevin
SEMI-RUDE QUESTION:
How do I get a copy of your novel, The Ocean Above Me without paying for it?
ANSWER:
Let me answer . . .
What’s in a name?
SEMI-RUDE QUESTION:
The lead in your novel is named Lukas Landon. To paraphrase Albert Brooks in the film Broadcast News, “That’s a lot of alliteration from anxious authors in not-so powerful posts. What gives?
ANSWER:
Naming is tricky . . .
Write drunk, edit sober?
SEMI-RUDE QUESTION:
In some of your non-fiction, you whine about past struggles with alcohol and sometimes drugs. How has this impacted your writing, other than providing dramatic fodder?
ANSWER:
I wouldn’t say I ‘whined’ . . .
It isn’t easy, coming up with book titles.
SEMI-RUDE QUESTION:
So many of today’s book titles read cryptically like they were named by AI. What’s your take on titles and what’s the story with yours?
ANSWER:
For me, titles are . . .
Writing what you know or cribbing from your own life?
SEMI-RUDE QUESTION:
Okay, let me get this straight. In your novel, the main character is a journalist and former war correspondent. Same as you, right? Did you just steal from yourself and repackage it as fiction?
ANSWER:
It’s fair to suspect . . .
Are there really second acts in life?
SEMI-RUDE QUESTION:
Was writing this novel a ‘one-off’ for you or is this really a second-act following your career as a journalist?
ANSWER:
That depends on . . .
MEDIA
Sea Stories: Fact & Fiction at Bookmania! 2024
Authors Earl Swift and Kevin Sites discuss their poignant and provocative books where the sea is a central character — if not protagonist.
Yellow Shelf Podcast Featuring Kevin Sites
Author discusses his shift from journalism to fiction and the inspiration for The Ocean Above Me with Yellow Shelf podcast host, Johanna Fink.
The Ocean Above Me (Video Trailer)
Longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.
Trapped undersea in a capsized shrimping trawler, a damaged former war correspondent is forced to confront a deadly secret from his past in this gripping novel of trauma, loss, love, and redemption from the award-winning journalist and author of The Things They Cannot Say.
The best books of true-life sea adventures that will blow you overboard
“The books I’ve listed span a time of great global exploration occurring simultaneously with the engines of novel economic development. Most of that development was based on the exploitation of human and natural resources.”
WHY OUR MOST ENGROSSING MYSTERIES ARE UNDERWATER: Kevin Sites on the rapture of the deep
“Water mysteries thrill us like no other. Perhaps it’s because a body of water, an ocean, lake, river, flashfloods or even monsoon rains can so quickly separate us from the rest of humanity. Quite often with tragic permanence.”
Kansas Public Radio – Conversations “The Ocean Above Me” by Kevin Sites
“On this edition of Conversations, Kevin Sites talks with host Dan Skinner about his novel, “The Ocean Above Me.”
Business Insider: This Powerful Book Captures A Grim Reality Many Soldiers Face After Combat
On the streets of Fallujah, Iraq in 2004, veteran journalist Kevin Sites interviewed William Wold (Video link, starts at 23:00), a young Marine emotionally charged from combat, who had killed six insurgents just moments before relating his experiences. Sites' candid...
San Francisco Chronicle: ‘The Things They Cannot Say’
Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War By Kevin Sites (Harper Perennial; 295 pages; $15.99 paperback) When soldiers discuss their experiences at war, they often talk of a breaking point - the first time they pulled the...
KPCC: ‘The Things They Cannot Say’: Inside the secret world of soldiers
http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2013/02/18/30556/the-things-they-cannot-say-inside-the-secret-world/ There are some stories soldiers don't share when they return home, because of shame or anger, because they are afraid of what others may think of them, or...
NPR: When U.S. Leaves After 12 Years, What’s Next For Afghanistan?
Journalist Kevin Sites reported from Afghanistan when the United States invaded in 2001, and he has been back a handful of times. With U.S. and NATO troops scheduled to withdraw next year, Sites calls the American legacy "a paradox." While many Afghans appreciate...
CONTACT
LITERARY REPRESENTATION:
Michael Signorelli
Aevitas Creative Management
19 West 21st Street, Suite 501
New York, New York 10010
(914) 450-4731
aevitascreative.com
EMAIL:
oceanaboveme@gmail.com
WEBSITES:
Kevin Sites Reports
http://www.kevinsitesreports.com/
Kevin Sites Writes
http://www.kevinsiteswrites.com/
YouTube CHANNELS:
Kevin Sites
Video reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflicts.
A World of Conflict
Feature length documentary, companion to book, In the Hot Zone
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/kevinsites
Flickr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hotzone/with/221519744/