Wren Mitchell is a scientist. She trusts observation, repeatability, and clean data. After a vestibular injury ended her NASA trajectory, she starts over at Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, where certainty is easier in the lab than in life. Then Owen Reid enters her field of vision. Wren begins marking small, unlabelled ticks in the margins each time he says exactly the right thing at exactly the wrong moment. Field Study is a literary romance about discipline, desire, and what happens when the evidence no longer lets you look away.