Excerpt from Wild and Distant Seas by Tara Karr Roberts, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I meant to march him out into the street, but two figures stood in the moonlight just outside the door. A pale young man, nearly a boy, gaped at the massive pots Hosea had hung to signal the inn's name. His tall, dark companion tipped his hat my way before turning his face to the dim street, as if to avoid interrupting either my business or his friend's reverie. I kept Mr. Davidson to the porch, where in the dampened red glow of the lantern I hissed between my teeth that he had no claim on me or anything else in Mr. Hussey's house.

Soused and sheepish, he folded into himself. "I was just trying to say to you ..." he mumbled.

"You have nothing to say to me other than clam or cod, Mr. Davidson," I said. "You'll have nothing else of mine. Now get along with you."

He shuffled his feet and ran a hand through his thinning hair, and I realized he'd left his hat at his table. I was about to insist upon fetching it myself when the young man who'd been entranced by the pots suddenly strode toward us, the clamshell pavement crackling beneath his boots. He cleared his throat and said, "I see we have found the Try Pots, then."

He stepped into the lantern light as Mr. Davidson slunk out of it. A skiff of beard shaded his round cheeks, but deep furrows crossed his forehead and gathered in the corners of his amber eyes, which darted about, examining everything around him as he talked. He wore the outfit of a sailor, yet when he clasped my hand in his, I felt the soft, unmarred skin of a boy from the city. He had perhaps never sailed, other than across the Nantucket Sound, though surely he had spent many hours reading and thinking about it. He said I should call him Ishmael. His friend stood patiently as Ishmael chattered about lodging and supper and "the best-kept hotel in all Nantucket," and I beckoned them to follow me into the public room. The sooner the young men sat down, the sooner I could return to making certain Mr. Davidson was firmly under my illusion.

I paused to retrieve Davidson's hat at the table I had forced him to abandon. Ishmael took my action to be an invitation and sat down, staring for a moment at the dregs at the bottom of Mr. Davidson's bowl and the damp spot on the table from the ale I'd caused him to spill. Ishmael's companion, whom he introduced as Queequeg, took the opposite seat, and I saw him clearly—the thick, black lines and crosses that patterned his face, trailed down his neck, disappeared into his collar, flowed back out across the backs of his large, brown hands. As I stared, he clicked his teeth, drawing my attention back to his face. He tilted his chin toward Ishmael, who sat rubbing his hands together as he glanced about the room. Supper first.

"Well, gentlemen, would you prefer clam chowder, or cod?" I said.

Ishmael continued to study the room with a sweet smile, saying nothing.

I cleared my throat. "Clam or cod?"

He blinked and shook his head, sending his dark curls waving. "What's that about cods, ma'am?"

I gathered up Mr. Davidson's dishes. "Would you like clam," I said, slower, crisper, "or cod?"

Ishmael rambled on about clams, chuckling at his own jokes. I noticed a movement in the doorway and spotted Mr. Davidson, still looking for his hat but apparently now understanding that he ought not step back into the public room that night. My patience with men was spent for the evening.

"Clam for two," I shouted to Betty, the taciturn widow I'd hired to help me serve. I tossed the hat to Mr. Davidson, and stepped into the kitchen to deposit the dishes.

I presented my new guests with two steaming bowls of clam chowder. Ishmael's expression, so full of restlessness and distraction before, shifted to a smile, softening the lines on his face as he closed his eyes and breathed in the salty steam.

"I confess I'd missed your meaning at first, Mrs. Hussey," he said. "Clam or cod chowder, of course! The mystery is solved."

Excerpted from Wild and Distant Seas by Tara Karr Roberts. Copyright © 2024 by Tara Karr Roberts. Excerpted by permission of W.W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.