When We Were Pirates

Six Boys, One Promise, Thirty-One Years

Asher Tran learned early that being useful was how you earned your place. At five, he stood at a chain-link fence watching a kindergarten playground fill up, gripping his backpack straps, waiting for the moment it would be safe to move. Then Khoa climbed into the sandbox next to him without waiting to be invited. Do you want to be pirates? That afternoon, six boys buried a time capsule and made a promise: dig it up when we're dads. Thirty-one years later, the playground is being demolished. The sandbox is gone. Kevin's text arrives at dawn: They're digging up the playground tomorrow. We need to get there first. What they buried wasn't just toys. In the hours between the text and the reunion, Asher drops his own son off at the same kindergarten, in the same classroom, and watches Micah meet a girl named Priya who has strong opinions about dinosaurs. He recognizes the moment immediately—the precise quality of a friendship that's about to rearrange everything. The universe, it turns out, has a sense of humor about these things. WHEN WE WERE PIRATES is the story of six boys who became men without losing each other, of the wounds that get managed and the ones that finally heal, and of what happens when the children of your chosen family walk into the same sandbox you did—and the whole thing begins again. For readers who loved Normal People, A Little Life, and The Interestings—a novel about the specific, irreplaceable warmth of being known across decades, the long work of becoming yourself, and the people who climb in without waiting.