The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel
&#8220;The arresting prose, vividly original characters, and narrative drive with which Smith tells this story of desperate familial love on a long-ago coast provided this reader with several hours of pure pleasure and a rare glimpse of grace in a fictional world.&#8221; (Anita Shreve)&#8220;A marvel. With prose as meticulous as brushstrokes, I can think of no other debut filled with such wonder, grace, and beauty&#8230;a tremendous achievement, a masterful exploration of parenthood and faith&#8230;An heir apparent to Michael Ondaatje and Marilynne Robinson, Katy Simpson Smith has written a book for all of us.&#8221; (Paul Yoon)&#8220;Smith hasn&#8217;t merely evoked late-18th century American lives on shore and at sea-she&#8217;s invented them afresh&#8230;She doesn&#8217;t peddle the cozy illusion that, after all, these were people just like us; while reading THE STORY OF LAND AND SEA, we become just like them.&#8221; (David Gates)&#8220;A pristine and powerful book&#8230;[Smith&#8217;s] voice is a poet&#8217;s and her vision is as expansive as the ocean, as the history in its depths. In her gorgeous and heart-rending first novel, she lays bare the hearts of parent and child, slave and master, and, most impressively, her readers.&#8221; (Bret Anthony Johnston)&#8220;Smith&#8217;s soulful language of loss is almost biblical, and the descriptions of her characters&#8217; sorrows are poetic and moving.&#8221; (Publishers Weekly)&#8220;A luminous Revolutionary War novel set to be the debut of the year&#8221; (Vogue)