Wild and distant seas : a novel

Title:

Author:

Summary:

Evangeline Hussey has made a home for herself on Nantucket, though she knows she is still an outsider to the island’s small, close-knit community, one that by 1849 has started to feel the decline of a once-thriving whaling industry. Her husband, Hosea, and the life they built together, was once all she needed—but now Hosea is gone, lost at sea. Evangeline is only able to hold on to his inn, and her place on the island, by employing a curious gift to glimpse and re-form the recent memories of those who would cast her out. One night, an idealistic sailor appears on her doorstep asking her to call him Ishmael. He seeks only a warm bed and a bowl of chowder, and yet suddenly, unsettlingly, her careful illusion begins to fracture. He soon sails away with Ahab to hunt an infamous white whale, and Evangeline is left to forge a new life from the pieces that remain. -- Amazon.

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

285 pages ; 24 cm

Genre:

Historical fiction.

Magic realist fiction.

Subject Term:

Geographic Term:

Nantucket Island (Mass.) -- Fiction.

Publisher:

W.W. Norton & Company,

Publication Date:

2024

ISBN:

9781324064886

Publication Information:

New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, [2024]

Call Number:

ROBERTS

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003691444	New Adult Fiction	ROBERTS Tara Karr	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

Evangeline Hussey has made a home for herself on Nantucket, though she knows she is still an outsider to the island's small, close-knit community, one that by 1849 has started to feel the decline of a once-thriving whaling industry. Her husband, Hosea, and the life they built together, was once all she needed--but now Hosea is gone, lost at sea. Evangeline is only able to hold on to his inn, and her place on the island, by employing a curious gift to glimpse and re-form the recent memories of those who would cast her out.

One night, an idealistic sailor appears on her doorstep asking her to call him Ishmael. He seeks only a warm bed and a bowl of chowder, and yet suddenly, unsettlingly, her careful illusion begins to fracture. He soon sails away with Ahab to hunt an infamous white whale, and Evangeline is left to forge a new life from the pieces that remain.

Her choices ripple through generations, across continents, and into the depths of the sea, in a narrative that follows Evangeline and her descendants from mid-nineteenth century Nantucket to Boston, Brazil, Florence, and Idaho. Moving, beautifully written, and elegantly conceived, Wild and Distant Seas takes Moby-Dick as its starting point, but Tara Karr Roberts brings four remarkable women to life in a spellbinding epic all her own.

Author Notes

Tara Karr Roberts is a freelance writer, science writer, and newspaper columnist. She is a lifelong Idahoan who grew up along the Pend Oreille River and now lives in Moscow, Idaho, with her family.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Roberts draws in her stunning debut on Herman Melville's Moby-Dick for a story of women with magical powers. Evangeline is 19 when she arrives in Nantucket in 1849 and takes a room at the Try Pots Inn. Six days later, she marries the inn's proprietor, Hosea. Two years into their happy marriage, Hosea dies at sea. To ensure the inn won't be taken away from her, Evangeline uses an ability she discovered as a child to look into other people's minds and revise their memories. In this case, she makes the townsfolk believe Hosea will return. Eventually, a restless sailor named Ishmael arrives at the Try Pots with his handsome companion Queequeg, who rejects Evangeline's advances. She then has an affair Ishmael, who impregnates her before the sailors leave on the Pequod to hunt an infamous white whale. Years later, Evangeline and Ishmael's daughter, Rachel, who never met her father, is captivated by a series of seafaring stories published in a Boston newspaper. Believing the stories to be written by the long-lost Ishmael, she embarks on a dangerous ocean voyage to find him, using her own powers of mind control to survive. Roberts writes with confidence and dynamic range, mixing earthy details of dead fish and whale oil with sublime descriptions of the women's psychic abilities (Evangeline sees others' recent memories as "fresh and soft as paint on a canvas not yet dried"). This is beautiful. Agent: Chris Kepner, Kepner Agency. (Jan.)