Kip Robinson Greenthal will be joined on zoom with bestselling author Brenda Peterson who calls Shoal Water “…A haunting, lyrical, and startling debut novel..”
Disillusioned by the Vietnam war and troubled by their own past, Kate and Andy leave New York City for a remote Nova Scotia fishing village in search of a simpler life. Living in Andy’s boyhood summer home, they discover the old house is haunted by its original owner, Basil Tannard, who decades earlier was saved by a seal from an accident at sea.
As Kate and Andy settle into the barren, Atlantic community and start a bookstore and begin to raise a family, they discover the problems of their own past are mirrored in the unrest of the locals who are grappling with change as modern technology threatens their traditional fishing livelihood.
Shoal water is a treacherous place to be. Not in deep water, and not on land, it is a place in between, full of unexpected hazards, of submerged sandbars, diffracted waves, and counter currents. The story follows Kate’s passage out of dependence into self-possession. It is a compelling story of navigating dangerous waters and gaining the power to redeem loss and find forgiveness and belief in the unimaginable.
“The land and sea come alive in this lovely gem of a book, and the fog in a Nova Scotia village is a vibrant thing, shrouding magic and mystery and the painful secrets of the people within.” –Sam Howe Verhovek, author of Jet Age, and feature writer for The National Geographic
“A beautiful love story set on the margins–on calm waters above dangerous reefs, in the mists between sea and sky, in the confounding spaces between men and women, youth and age, urban and rural, myth and memory. Greenthal’s prose is as ageless as the landscapes she describes, capturing perfectly the rhythms and voices of Nova Scotia, rendering her characters with precision, and building a story that rises as gently and breaks as savagely as a rogue wave.” —Karen Fisher, author of national best seller, A Sudden Country
Kip Robinson Greenthal worked in school and public libraries and founded Seattle Arts & Lectures’ award winning Writers in the Schools program. She has written several short stories and her first novel, Shoal Water, won the 2020 Landmark Prize for Fiction. Kip lives with her husband on Lopez Island, Washington.
Brenda Peterson is the author of over 20 books, including Duck and Cover a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year.” Her memoir, I Want to Be Left Behind, was selected as a “Top Ten Best Non-Fiction” book by the Christian Science Monitor and an Indie Next “Great Read,” by Independent Booksellers. Peterson’s latest book is Wolf Nation, chosen as a “Best Conservation Book of the Year” by Forbes magazine. Her work has appeared on NPR and in The New York Times, Tikkun, and Oprah magazine. Her new kid’s book is Catastrophe by the Sea and her new novel, Railroad Girl, is forthcoming in spring 2023. www.BrendaPetersonBooks.com