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Or, The Star-Gazer: A Novel
From the opening line—"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last"—you will know that you are in the hands of a master storyteller and in the company of a fascinating woman hero. Inspired by a brief passage in Moby-Dick, Sena Jeter Naslund has created an enthralling and compellingly readable saga, spanning a rich, eventful, and dramatic life. At once a family drama, a romantic adventure, and a portrait of a real and loving marriage, Ahab's Wife gives new perspective on the American experience.
"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last." This is destined to
be remembered as one of the most-recognized first sentences in literature--along
with "Call me Ishmael." Sena Jeter Naslund has created an entirely new universe
with a transcendent heroine at its center who will be every bit as memorable as
Captain Ahab.
Ahab's Wife is a novel on a grand scale that can legitimately be called a
masterpiece: beautifully written, filled with humanity and wisdom, rich in
historical detail, authentic and evocative. Melville's spirit informs every page
of her tour de force. Una Spenser's marriage to Captain Ahab is certainly a
crucial element in the narrative of Ahab's Wife, but the story covers
vastly more territory.
After a spellbinding opening scene, the tale flashes back to Una's childhood in
Kentucky; her idyllic adolescence with her aunt and uncle's family at a
lighthouse near New Bedford; her adventures disguised as a cabin boy on a
whaling ship; her first marriage to a fellow survivor who descends into violent
madness; courtship and marriage to Ahab; life as mother and a rich captain's
wife in Nantucket; involvement with Frederick Douglass; and a man who is in
Nantucket researching his novel about his adventures on her ex-husband's ship.
Ahab's Wife is a breathtaking, magnificent, and uplifting story of one
woman's spiritual journey, informed by the spirit of the greatest American
novel, but taking it beyond tragedy to redemptive triumph.
"Excepting a few inconsequential false steps, a genuine epic of America: an inspired homage to one of our greatest writers that brilliantly reinterprets, and in many ways rivals, his masterpiece." - Kirkus Reviews.
"A complex and sophisticated book, brilliantly written, beautifully illustrated." - Booklist.
"This tour de force does not attain its model's literary genius, but nevertheless it is a whale of a read. Recommended for all fiction collections." - Library Journal.
"In the last third of the book, readers may become weary of Una's spiritual reflections and the minutiae of her daily routine. But these are small faults in a splendid novel that amply fulfills its ambitious purpose offering a sweeping, yet intimate picture of a remarkable woman who both typifies and transcends her times. Illustrations by Christopher Wormell." - Publishers Weekly.
This information about Ahab's Wife was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Marion Ettlinger
Sena Jeter Naslund is an American writer, born in Birmingham, Alabama. Her mother taught music and her father, who died when she was 15, was a doctor; she has two older brothers.
In high school she played cello with the Alabama Pops Orchestra. She won a music scholarship to the University of Alabama but turned it down in favor of studying writing at Birmingham-Southern College, while she was there she attended the Breadloaf Writers' Conference - a two week series of lectures, workshops and classes (since 1926, the conference has been held annually at the Breadloaf Inn, Middlebury, Vermont and claims to be the oldest writers' conference in the USA).
After graduating from Birmingham-Southern, she was accepted at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa where she received her MA ...
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