A Little Unsteady

Told with raw honesty and lyrical grace, “A Little Unsteady” is a moving story about grief, young love, and the fragile beauty of learning to trust again. It’s one of those rare books that completely draws you in and makes you fall in love with its characters.

Genre: Commercial, realistic fiction
Rights available: World English / Translation / Film & TV
Audience: Young Adult.
Word count: 71,000 approx
Timeline: Present
Setting: Brooklyn, USA
Narrative Perspective: Phoenix narrates in first person, past tense

Comparables

“Good Will Hunting”

Synopsis

Sixteen-year-old Phoenix Healy has lost everything that once anchored her. After her family dies in a plane tragedy, she’s sent from Maryland to live in Brooklyn with her eccentric uncle, a washed-up writer trying to rebuild his own life. Phoenix starts at a new school, keeping to herself until she meets Bowie Marquez, a mechanic’s son with a sharp wit and a secret, he’s illiterate. What begins as reluctant tutoring becomes an unexpected friendship, and then a fragile love story between two damaged teens searching for purpose.

Through Bowie, Phoenix rediscovers empathy, laughter, and the strength to be vulnerable again. But their bond is tested by social divides and Bowie’s fear that her brilliance only magnifies his failures. As the year unfolds, Phoenix’s academic success grows alongside Bowie’s progress in reading. Yet guilt and trauma still shadow her, she can’t forgive herself for surviving when her family didn’t.

Their relationship unravels after a painful confrontation, and they part ways just before the state debate finals.

Teaser

She leaned forward, eyes glinting like she was about to tell a fairy tale.
“You’re surrounded by it here. When you pick up a book and lie in bed at night, it’s there. When you lie on a beach, sand teasing your toes, and you hold the most magnificent words in your hands, it’s there. When you sit under the trees in Central Park, and the leaves rustle above while you leap into the unknown, it’s there, too.”
She sat back, smiling like she’d said the punchline.
Still cryptic. Still Shelly.
I didn’t want to ask directly. I wanted more of her dancing around the bush.
“Books?” I guessed.
She lit up.
“There’s hope.”
She sliced another piece of halloumi.
“If he’s illiterate, how are books an opportunity?”
She frowned, sympathetically, like my failure to understand hurt her. “Hope is lost,” she said softly. She passed me the cheese on the knife. I popped it in my mouth.
The texture squeaked against my teeth, like grilled rubber. But damn, it was delicious.
“Mmm.”
“Advice, Sweetie? And it’s free.” She leaned back, licking a bit of cheese crumb off her finger. “Sex is intimate. Agreed?”
Here we go. Shelly couldn’t go five minutes without bringing up sex. It was inevitable, like gravity or taxes. I nodded.
“Good. But there’s something more intimate than sex. And no, it’s not a chocolate mousse or that orgasmic ice cream-tasting nonsense.”
She leaned in, like she was offering up a secret deeper than the number forty-two. “Reading.”
“Reading?” I echoed, thrown. My back slumped into the chair.
“Reading,” she repeated, eyes full of fire. “Have you ever read to someone who cared? Or had someone read to you, with their whole soul in their voice?”
I didn’t say anything. But I sat up straighter.
“Take that couple behind you,” she whispered. “They’ve come here for years. He reads poetry to her. She reads novels to him. You should see their eyes when it happens.”
She leaned in further. “They’re married, you know. To other people.”
“They don’t have sex. She doesn’t go down on him. He doesn’t twist her into a pretzel with his tongue. No.” She tapped her cigarette case. “They release their passions through words. And they’re happy in their marriages.”
She laughed to herself. “I’ve met them both. Separately, of course. Their spouses have no idea. Maybe it’s a kind of cheating. But who am I to judge?”
She finally pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep drag. Then, through a silky stream of smoke: “Read to Bowie, darling.” Another drag. “Teach him to read, in the most lovely and intimate way.”