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A Novel
by Tara Karr Roberts
Book Reviewed by:A gorgeous debut, laced through with magic, following four generations of women as they seek to chart their own futures.
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.
Chapter 1
It took me some time to appreciate the smell of dead fish. When I arrived on Nantucket I was nineteen, claiming myself to be the niece of a businessman who was due to visit the island in search of a ship to sponsor. I took a room at the Try Pots inn, and there I met its proprietor, Hosea Hussey. Over a bowl of thin and gritty clam chowder, I told him I could make better. Perhaps this was overconfident, as I had never so much as touched a sea creature, but he said he would be pleased to see me try. When I told him the uncle and the ship were lies, Hosea laughed. We were married six days later on the deck of the whaler Deborah by a half-drunk minister who had stumbled over from the mainland some days earlier. Hosea wore an ill-fitting suit left to him, alongside the inn, by his late father; I, my yellow gown. As its skirts brushed the polished planks, they released the stench of whale oil, and I wondered if I should ever again smell the sea air without the smell of its ...
A story of four generations of strong women, each having a unique gift of clairvoyance, and their worldwide search for the elusive Ishmael, whose absence affected each life in a different way (Beth W). The story made me want to keep turning the pages. I had to finish the book. There was no guessing the end and I like that in a story (Veronica E). Fortunately, you do not need to be a lit major or even read Moby-Dick to understand and appreciate Roberts' debut novel. The multi-generational story of Evangeline and her heirs is compelling and intriguing as they each navigate their life paths and mother-daughter relationships (Melissa H)...continued
Full Review
(609 words)
(Reviewed by BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers).
Julie Gerstenblatt, author of Daughters of Nantucket
A lyrical and beautiful work of historical fiction.… Charming and atmospheric, Wild and Distant Seas celebrates the complexities of womanhood through the ages and poses questions about memory, family identity, one's legacy, and the nature and power of free will. What stories do we inherit and how much can we alter the narrative of our lives and of those of our loved ones? And when is it time to let go? At its heart, this is a story of loss, redemption, tenacity, and hope. Ruth Emmie Lang, author of Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance and The Wilderwomen
Tara Karr Roberts breathes new life into a classic tale with a radiant cast of women at the helm. Wholly absorbing and beautifully written, Wild and Distant Seas is sure to someday be a classic in its own right.
Whether you love Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, hate it or have never read it, you may find yourself unable to escape it. Even for a classic, it shows surprising reach, having inspired and influenced numerous authors, artists and scholars, historical and contemporary. Published in 1851, it continues to be deconstructed, reconstructed, analyzed, interpreted, adapted and added to, with one example of a literary spin-off being Tara Karr Roberts' debut Wild and Distant Seas, which follows four generations of women linked to the book's main character Ishmael. Below are just a few of the many other pieces of writing, both short and long, fiction and non-fiction, that interact with or cast their gaze on Melville's iconic novel.
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