Outside Detroit on the island of Gross Ile, the Kurkjians learn that Mari, the eldest of their youngest generation, has swum into the depths of Lake Michigan—a suicide that reverberates throughout the family and lays bare the deeply rooted pain that is their legacy.

More than a century earlier, Gregor, the Kurkjian’s larger-than-life patriarch, survived the Armenian Genocide after fighting for his freedom atop Musa Dagh. Decades later and miles away, Gregor’s epic mythos looms large over his descendants’ lives. As these Kurkjians contend with Mari’s devastating loss, secrets and shortcomings rise to the surface, forcing each of them to decide where their own story fits in the narrative of the family’s fraught history.

For fans of Tommy Orange’s There, There, Thao Thai’s Banyan Moon, and Jeffrey Eugenides epic Middlesex, Waterline explores the complex, unexpected beauty of diaspora, the weight of inherited trauma, and the echoes of the genocide on contemporary Armenian life. Aram Mrjoian brilliantly creates a searing portrait of a family afloat in grief as it struggles to find the perseverance needed to rise above.