The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel
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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 amidst 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 lonely paths we travel in the name of renewal.
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Katy Simpson Smith. (2014). The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel. Unabridged HarperAudio.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Katy Simpson Smith. 2014. The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel. HarperAudio.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel. HarperAudio, 2014.
MLA Citation (style guide)Katy Simpson Smith. The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel. Unabridged HarperAudio, 2014.
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Katy Simpson Smith is the author of a study of early American motherhood, We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835, and a novel, The Story of Land and Sea. She lives in New Orleans.
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- fullDescription
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 amidst 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 lonely paths we travel in the name of renewal.
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- content: The North Carolina coast is almost a character in this story set during and after the Revolutionary War, but the war itself is mere background. The prose is beautiful, and Edoardo Ballerini delivers it with a deep, sonorous voice that expresses the rhythm of the sea. His narration brings life to the varied and complex characters, making each unique and identifiable without resorting to a collection of different voices. He makes the transitions from war to post-war--and from Tabitha and her family to Moll and her son--go smoothly with his careful, explicit delivery, offering us a window into harsh lives filled with mercy, beauty, and grace. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
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June 2, 2014
A bereaved father and his son-in-law struggle to understand the tragedies that have befallen them in Smith’s debut novel, which is set among the marshes of coastal North Carolina during the uncertain time of the American Revolution. John, a widowed soldier, is perplexed by the faith of others in a God who takes so much and gives so little. When his beloved daughter, Tabitha, contracts yellow fever, he stows her away with him on a schooner bound for Bermuda in a desperate attempt to curb the ravages of the disease. Tabitha’s grandfather, Asa, owner of a small plantation called Long Ridge, grieves over the loss of his granddaughter. He also mourns her mother, his only daughter Helen, whom John stole away for a happy interlude of love and freedom on the high seas before her untimely death in childbirth. Helen’s slave companion, Moll, like Asa, feels left behind, married off to another slave she did not know. Her only consolation is her feisty first-born son Davy, although she has other children, all girls. When John decides to strike out over land on a journey westward, Moll’s heart is irrevocably shattered. Smith’s soulful language of loss is almost biblical, and the descriptions of her characters’ sorrows are poetic and moving.
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June 15, 2014
Set on the North Carolina coast during and following the American Revolution, this debut novel centers on Asa, owner of a small turpentine plantation, whose daughter, Helen, falls in love with soldier and sometime pirate John and goes to sea with him after the war when her father refuses to bless the marriage. Rounding out the cast of primary characters is Helen's slave, Moll, whose lack of choice in creating her own destiny is sharply contrasted with Helen's. Somewhat ironically, despite the setting in a time of war, it is the females' lives that are most at risk, as three generations of women succumb to childbirth or illness. There is a pervasive sense of loneliness and loss throughout the novel. Smith's spare prose and storytelling style is resonant of oral history or folk tales, and the early chapters focusing on John and his daughter Tabitha, and her desire for the sea, call to mind Sena Jeter Naslund's Ahab's Wife. At first, this style creates something of a remove for the reader, and it's not until the story of John and Helen's courtship that one begins to be emotionally invested. VERDICT Despite the many sad events, the reader eventually engages, and the novel ends with a note of hope.--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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August 1, 2014
An unvarnished tale of seafaring, slavery and new beginnings set in post-Revolutionary North Carolina. In her debut novel, Smith takes liberties with linear narrative and employs ever shifting points of view but still doesn't quite manage to imbue her stoic characters with inner lives. As the Revolution trickles to an end, the seaside town of Beaufort is in decline as its once-thriving harbor empties and its young men seek opportunity elsewhere. Aging widower Asa, who owns a turpentine plantation, maintains a prickly detente with his son-in-law, John, a former pirate who ran away to sea with Asa's only daughter, Helen, who later died giving birth to a daughter, Tabitha. When Tabitha contracts yellow fever at age 10, John thinks, in desperation, that a sea voyage will restore her health. His hopes dashed, John returns to Beaufort to bury Tabitha alongside Helen. The scene shifts to earlier, happier times: Helen and John, a penniless sailor-turned-soldier, meet at a regimental tea and quietly fall in love. While John is off fighting the British, Helen expertly runs the turpentine enterprise while Asa pursues political ambitions. John and Helen reunite after she escapes captivity aboard a British ship. (All potential for swashbuckling romance is studiously ignored.) Meanwhile, Asa's slaves play out their own scenarios of parenthood and loss. Moll, a companion to Helen since both were 10, is married against her will. Her firstborn son, Davy, is her only consolation. When Davy and John set out for the frontier, motherly love compels Moll to take a suicidal risk. Though Smith's homespun prose conveys a sense of the period without undo artifice, this is more a diorama of archetypes than a fully-fleshed drama. A bleak, unsentimental but ultimately static evocation of early American lives.COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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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 amidst 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.
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