Wild and Distant Seas

Four generations of women use their magical gifts to search for and complete the family they each long for, with Moby-Dick as the novel’s starting point. Evangeline Hussey, a young widow, runs an inn and chowder house on Nantucket in 1849, where she puts up a sailor named Ishmael and his companion, Queequeg. Evangeline has a brief affair with Ishmael until he signs on to the doomed whaling ship Pequod. He is long gone when Evangeline finds she is pregnant. She then foresees an infamous white whale’s attack on the Pequod but knows that Ishmael will survive the wreck. Her daughter Rachel and subsequent generations spend their lives in search of Ishmael, using their psychic abilities to follow the path he left behind. When fourth-generation Annie returns to Nantucket in 1905, she is reunited with her great-grandmother, who tells her story, filling in the blanks in the family history. Roberts spins a gorgeous, lightly magical story about a generational search for family. Each woman searches for answers as best she can, creating her own story as she goes. Natasha Soudek expertly narrates this fabulous debut with feeling.