I received a free book for my honest review.
About the Book:
• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harper (August 26, 2014)
Set in a small coastal town in North Carolina during the waning years of the American Revolution, this incandescent debut novel follows three generations of family—fathers and daughters, mother and son, master and slave—characters who yearn for redemption amid a heady brew of war, kidnapping, slavery, and love.
Drawn to the ocean, ten-year-old Tabitha wanders the marshes of her small coastal village and listens to her father’s stories about his pirate voyages and the mother she never knew. Since the loss of his wife, Helen, John has remained land-bound for their daughter, but when Tab contracts yellow fever, he turns to the sea once more. Desperate to save his daughter, he takes her aboard a sloop bound for Bermuda, hoping the salt air will heal her.
Years before, Helen herself was raised by a widowed father. Asa, the devout owner of a small plantation, gives his daughter a young slave named Moll for her tenth birthday. Left largely on their own, Helen and Moll develop a close but uneasy companionship. Helen gradually takes over the running of the plantation as the girls grow up, but when she meets John, the pirate turned Continental soldier, she flouts convention and her father’s wishes by falling in love. Moll, meanwhile, is forced into marriage with a stranger. Her only solace is her son, Davy, whom she will protect with a passion that defies the bounds of slavery.
In this elegant, evocative, and haunting debut, Katy Simpson Smith captures the singular love between parent and child, the devastation of love lost, and the desperate paths we travel in the name of renewal.
About the Author:
Katy Simpson Smith was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She attended Mount Holyoke College and received a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She has been working as an adjunct professor at Tulane University and is the author of We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835. She lives in New Orleans.
Connect with Katy Simpson Smith through her website.
My Opinion:
Sometimes you find an author who writes in such a way that you are no longer reading but rather experiencing the story. Katy Simpson Smith in her debut, The Story of Land and Sea had that magic pen. I picked up the book and from the first page I found myself immersed in the world that Ms. Smith was creating. It was not a happy world in a lot of ways as the story revolves around love and loss.
The novel starts in 1793 in Beaufort, S.C., with a father and his daughter. His wife died in childbirth and he remembers their freedom as they sailed as privateers. She married against her father Asa’s will for love and her father never forgave her or her husband but he did love his granddaughter. In her he saw the hope for the future he lost when his daughter died. But Tabitha does not want to be a lady of the manor any more than her mother Helen did.
A crisis strikes leading Tabitha and her father John to a hasty decision that will alienate them from Asa and cause a spiral down for all. Also involved in the story is Moll, a slave given to Helen as a 10th birthday present.
This is not a book that deals with easy themes and it does not spare the reader on emotions but the writing is so good that you just float along on the tide of the story. I found my self crying more than once and it’s been a long time since a book impacted me in that way. I forgot I was reading – it was not an easy read but it was so very easy to read. I’ll be keeping this one to read again and I suspect it will become a favorite despite the sorrow.
Rating:
5
