Book Club Discussion Questions for Wild and Distant Seas by Tara Karr Roberts

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, A Moby-Dick Reading List and our BookBrowse Review of Wild and Distant Seas.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Tara Karr Roberts's Wild and Distant Seas is a novel that expands the world of a canonical work—much like Circe by Madeline Miller or James by Percival Everett. What minor or peripheral character in a favorite novel would you want to read about in a work like this?
2. How familiar with Moby-Dick are you? Do you feel like having read that book was necessary to your experience of reading Wild and Distant Seas?
3. What does Evangeline Hussey mean when she says "I wanted to believe I had changed the story, that the painting of my life on Nantucket now hung on my wall in unchangeable form: I at the inn, Hosea forever on the edge of returning. Yet I came to see I had wrought something far more fragile, an illusion etched on a pane of glass"? (p. 6) Did this impulse feel familiar to you?
4. Why do you think Roberts chooses to include the interstitial whale pod vignettes? What do these passages bring to the book?
5. The women of Wild and Distant Seas each seek out Ishmael in their own ways. How do their pursuits echo the quest at the heart of Moby-Dick? What truths do their obsessions obscure?
6. There is often a tension between love and freedom. The more people we love and commit ourselves to, the richer our bonds but also the less personal freedom we have—this is especially true for mothers. How does Roberts capture that tension in the lives of her characters? How does it drive the story forward?
7. Evangeline says of Rachel, "I saw more readily how her struggles with the power she inherited from me were not unlike my own—we feared our power, fought with it, experimented with it, embraced it only to push it away again, stood in awe of it, used it" (p. 281). What is the purpose of each woman's magic? Do you think these powers are more gift or curse?
8. What role does storytelling play throughout the novel?
9. Despite only being present in the narrative for a brief moment in time, Ishmael has a profound influence on ensuing generations. How do our ancestors affect our day-to-day lives?
10. Rachel is a polarizing character. Are you sympathetic to her or do you find her actions unforgivable?
11. In many ways this novel is a meditation on the universal search for belonging and meaning. How does being a woman, or a mother, complicate or influence that search?
12. Is there one character whose story most resonated with you? Who? Why?
13. Do you agree with Mrs. Aster's assessment that "if a woman wants a thing of her own in this world, she's got to work for it... . But she'd better be sure it's worth the work"? (p. 222) Do you think the choices Evangeline, Rachel, Mara, and Antonia make are "worth it"?
14. What do you think about the ending of this novel? Have your lingering questions been answered?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of W.W. Norton & Company. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.

For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, A Moby-Dick Reading List and our BookBrowse Review of Wild and Distant Seas.