One step. A slight hop to launch, and you’re airborne.

The goal is to make the dive look easy, to enter the water like a sword through butter, with not a single ripple to show for it. The goal is not to smack the water, belly-down, but as in the new novel, “Man Overboard!” by Kathleen Rooney, to do it with grace, elegance — and definitely with sobriety.

As he treaded water, waves washing up on his face and into his eyes, Patrick “Kick” Kilpatrick wished he could remember what happened.

One minute, he was aboard the Carnival Valor, drinking, enjoying-not-enjoying a Thanksgiving cruise with his extended family. The next minute, he was fighting to find the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, kicking off his shoes and his shorts, losing his phone, watching the ship blithely continue on. Apparently, nobody noticed that he’d fallen (or leaped?) from an upper deck of the ship.

Though he was a swimming phenom back in Nebraska, Kick hated the ocean. He hated being in water when he couldn’t touch the bottom, hated any place where possibly-dangerous creatures sneaked up behind him.

His sister, Kelly, would eventually think to check on him because she was always like that. Her worthless husband, however, wouldn’t care. Ulysses, Kick’s nephew, would miss him; Kick’s father and stepmother, too. But would they miss Kick like he longed for his mother, who’d been gone for years?

He wasn’t sure.

It didn’t matter. Within the hour, someone would come to save him.

He told himself that all night long, through every hour of treading water and every wave. Morning came, he put his shirt over his head so he didn’t blister in the Caribbean sun. He imagined his rescue, as dolphins, turtles and large fish visited him, counseled him, taunted him with unwanted comments. Someone would be along soon — but in the meantime, there was nothing to see but waves and water and a man slowly losing his mind…

As hot as it’s been this summer, at any one point, a dip in the ocean may have sounded mighty good, right? You’ll think twice after you read “Man Overboard!”

The second Kick hits the water, author Kathleen Rooney lets him dog-paddle into your psyche, complete with a lifetimes’ worth of regrets. He’s depressed, and admits it; he’s a slacker, and he knows that, too, which gives him an appealingly snarky-profane demeanor. True, you might think that reading the hours-long musings from a dying man might be tedious, but nothing could be further from the truth; Kick is philosophical and wry, self-pitying and self-depreciating, while also doing a little soul-searching, and Rooney keeps his thoughts taut. It’s suspense at its finest, but also with a splash of humor.

Will Kick be rescued? Nuh-uh. No spoilers here.

Unlike a classic “man in a small locked room” kind of suspense novel, “Man Overboard!” has a setting that’s some 32 million miles square. That doesn’t make it any less tight, though, so find it and dive right in.

“Man Overboard!” by Kathleen Rooney
c,2026, Gallery Books
$27.00
208 pages