finished reading

This debut novel is a great concept, building on elements of Moby Dick (although you don't have to read Moby Dick to appreciate this book).  It's about an obsessive search for the elusive figure--this time in human form.  I liked the intergenerational narrative threads and how the author intertwines a pod of whales as an interlude between sections.  The magical elements distracted me.

From the publisher:

Evangeline Hussey’s husband is dead—lost at sea—and she has only managed to hold on to his Nantucket inn by employing a curious gift to glimpse and re-form the recent memories of those around her. One night, an idealistic sailor appears on her doorstep asking her to call him Ishmael, and her careful illusion begins to fracture. He soon sails away with Ahab to hunt an infamous white whale, and Evangeline is left to forge a life from the pieces that remain.

Her choices ripple through generations, across continents, and into the depths of the sea, in a narrative that follows Evangeline and her descendants from mid-nineteenth century Nantucket to Boston, Brazil, Florence, and Idaho. Moving, beautifully written, and elegantly conceived, Wild and Distant Seas takes Moby-Dick as its starting point, but Tara Karr Roberts brings four remarkable women to life in a spellbinding epic all her own.

#52bookclub prompt 8: features the ocean.