Excerpt from Whidbey by T Kira Madden, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Birdie

I didn't know anything about Whidbey Island when I chose it, only that it was far. Only that it would take a great deal of work to get there, and more work to be found. When I say I closed my eyes and pointed to a map, I really mean that. I did. Red votive candle dripping over foil in the center of our dining room table, my girlfriend, Trace, sitting across from me, a full moon over north Brooklyn. Safety, we repeated, a Trace manifestation, and I hovered my hand as if feeling for heat—but when we opened our eyes to Elko, Nevada, it wasn't exactly far enough, so I moved my finger further west to Whidbey.

One month later Trace flew me to Seattle. We bought the one-way ferry ticket online, drove to the Mukilteo terminal. Then, there was my boat pulling in. Huge and white with a green lid over the top deck windows, a monstrous face to it, the gaping garage. Cars thumped from the ramp onto the ferry as I stepped on board, and it was dark in there, between all that machinery. I rolled my suitcase between cars and cinched my shoulders for better posture, wondering if any of the passengers were wondering about me. Who's that girl with the practical green suitcase? the faces would ask. What about her?

When I had thoughts this self-dramatizing, which was often, I imagined being hurled down a flight of stairs right after thinking them. Sometimes, knocked out by a mail truck, envelopes bursting onto a wet street. On the boat I followed passengers, and one of them—a gaunt freckled woman smeared white with sunscreen—held a door for me at the side of the garage. Thanks, I said, and trailed her and the others up the damp stairwell, like I knew where we were all going. Rather than carrying my suitcase by the handle, I let it clack-clack on each step, the sound echoing awfully. A few of the people looked back at me, just to see who, I guess. I had to commit to the choice now. I clacked all the way up.

The second door brought us to a passenger seating area, and for a moment I was back in Penn Station. For a moment, I'd never left. A white sign read Upper Deck, and windows dotted the whole perimeter, casting a greenish pale light; tables, bolted between pleather booths, collected glossy half-finished puzzles. The room wafted fried fish and cleaning products, and doors led out to a deck. Out there, the day drizzled sloppily over the parking lot and water. Late May, first breezes of summer, but still a cold that crept up shrewd. People walked past me out onto the deck, no umbrellas or anything; they just stood beneath the rain, jackets darkening. They smiled, white caps melting on the mountains behind them, phones clamped onto sticks.

I found a seat inside at the rear of the boat, and with an uneasy quiet, the glass window vibrated, woke to movement. The shoreline of Washington, the trees, Trace waving from our rented Honda Civic, they all grew smaller.

Children chased each other down the aisle between the ferry's benches. I flinched at their sounds, their little squawks and shrieks, thump of a tripped sneaker. One child aimed a toy slingshot, and powdery glittering balls arced through the air, fell slowly. Laughter, their mouths all laughing, before a man tiptoed beside them, arms up in a playful shield.

Then he sat across from me.

I'm Rich, he said, extending his hand. He gripped mine in that firm too firm single thrust this is a professional handshake way. He was handsome, for a man, with black seal-like eyes and a tight stern forehead, hair blown back as if in motion. He carried a plastic drugstore bag lumpy with clothes, which he twisted, then let spin around his wrist. He looked around my age, mid-twenties, Middle Eastern—from where I couldn't tell—and a bright rope of scar ran up his forearm and into his sleeve. I wondered if he was asked about that scar a lot, maybe the reveal was a benchmark in his romantic endeavors.

Excerpted from Whidbey by T Kira Madden. Copyright © 2026 by T Kira Madden. Excerpted by permission of Mariner Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.