The Long Way In: A Novella

Zafiro has never been the one to speak first. Two rows from the back of every lecture hall. One beer nursed for an hour at every party. Then, at 1:40 in the morning with a psychology midterm still open on his laptop, he books a week alone on a Pacific island he's never seen - no hostel confirmed yet, no plan beyond a return flight, and not one person waiting for him on the other end.What follows is six hours on foot through jungle rain, a stranger who might be the nicest person he's ever met, and a hostel built out of bamboo and borrowed nerve, full of strangers from every direction who've all come here to try on some version of themselves they couldn't back home. A volcano. A jungle rave. A beach that isn't supposed to exist. And a girl whose name turns out to already mean something to him, in a way neither of them can explain.The Long Way In is a quiet, funny, aching story about what happens when a shy kid finally stops watching his own life from two rows back - and about the difference between holding on to something, and keeping it whole by letting it go.For readers of coming-of-age travel fiction who like their self-discovery a little sunburnt, and true.