The Story of Land and Sea
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.
Review: I received an uncorrected proof copy of this book from HarperCollins.
This novel tells the story of three generations of family; "It is 1793, and they live in Beaufort in a four-room house" (5). Rather than expanding, the small family line has been continually chipped away at by death. Told in three parts, the novel opens in 1793 and focuses on ten year old Tabitha, who lives with her father John. Tabitha's mother Helen died when she was born, so the closest she comes to knowing her mother is through her father and her mother's father, Asa. In part two, the novel travels backwards in time to the period between 1771-1782 and focuses on Tabitha's mother Helen. In the final section of the novel, the narrative returns to 1793 to see John and Asa in the aftermath of loss.
I've visited Beaufort, so I was intrigued to read a novel set in a very historical version of the town. I was reeled in by the haunting sense of loss embedded in the narrative from the first page, when the reader sees John tucking in his motherless daughter, who asks her father to tell her more about the mother she never knew, "He watches Tab pull the quilt up to her chin, though even the storm can't blow away the heat of summer. She is waiting to hear his secrets. But it is hard to describe how it feels to stand next to someone you love on the shore at dusk" (3).
At first I was bothered by the fact that the three parts of this novel are not in chronological order. However, I think having Helen's section in the middle allows us to meet her daughter and learn about her in the only way her daughter can learn about the mother she can't remember - through the stories of those who knew her. Therefore, its striking when the narrative shifts to part two to meet this woman the reader has only seen through stories and through her motherless child, and widowed husband. And Helen turned out to be very different from the young woman I imagined. She is spoiled and bossy. She is pious and knows her own mind. She refuses to marry any of the suitors her father brings her, yet forces her slave Moll - given to her as a gift on her tenth birthday and ostensibly her best friend - to marry a near stranger. When Moll expresses her unhappiness, Helen rewards her by additional punishments, "when the slave passes her with a pitcher of lemonade, Helen pinches her on the leg" (83).
Many of the characters in this seem isolated and lonely, and are searching for meaning. Asa has built up his estate, but finds himself without an heir to leave it to, John is adrift and lives without meaning, Moll fights against the binds of slavery and her overwhelming love for her firstborn child. There is also much contemplation and discussion of faith in this novel. This seems to be a point of contention between John and his father-in-law Asa; "Asa would be happy to have the girl in heaven, might consider it safer than Beaufort, but John has no such faith. He could not leave his daughter's body with a man who would not mind it, whose vision of God implied the reclamation of his flock. John believes in flesh. His loves survives no transubstantiation" (36). Likewise, Moll expresses her doubt, "God has never seen her family. The catechism she learned and repeated until Helen stopped correcting her was always a lie. Does she believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting? Hasn't she died a hundred times and seen no resurrection?" (195).
This novel is about loss, about the tenuous hold that keeps the ones we love on earth. About moving on after loss. It's about a community in the aftermath of war. Although overwhelmingly sad, it's also beautiful: "John presses his ear to her chest and hears the sound of a woman walking through an overgrown garden, her silk dress brushing against, caught, torn by rose bushes. Tab's heart is walking in that garden" (50). And later, "He lays her hands upon her chest in a cross and kisses her forehead, which feels like stone on a fall morning" (54). I hope that John and Moll find their homes and that Asa finds the comfort he seeks in his old age.
Stars: 4
Comments
Post a Comment