A Sharp Endless Need A Novel

A propulsive and nostalgic coming-of-age novel about the relationship between two teammates on a rural high school basketball team, from the Lambda Award-winning author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself.

Star point guard Mack Morris’s senior year of high school begins with twin cataclysms: the death of her father and the arrival of transfer student Liv Cooper. On the court, Mack and Liv discover an exhilarating, game-winning chemistry; off the court, they fall into an equally intoxicating more-than-friendship that is out of bounds for their small Pennsylvania town in 2004, and especially, for Liv’s conservative mother. As Mack’s desire and grief collide with drugs, sex, and the looming college signing deadline, she is forced to reckon with the disconnects between her past and her future—and fight for the life she wants for herself, whether or not Liv will be on the court beside her.

Written with the lush longing of Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name and the obsessive attention of Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl, and with all the romance and feeling of the beloved 2000 movie Love & Basketball, Crane’s sophomore novel is a voice-driven, literary treatment of the big feelings of first love, intimacy, heartbreak, grief, and of course, sports.

Marisa Crane is a former college basketball player and the author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Indie Next pick, which has been featured by The Atlantic, Reactor, Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan, and many other publications. They have attended Bread Loaf and the Tin House Workshop and received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and American Short Fiction, and their short work has appeared in Literary Hub, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Joyland, and elsewhere. Originally from Allentown, PA, they currently live in San Diego with their family.