The Sea-Glass Shore - Paperback

by Julie Salmon Kelleher (Author)

When Jack, librarian and folklorist, meets Rona, she puts aside her sealskin to live as his human wife.

Jack knows all selkie stories end the same: the seal-woman finds her stolen skin and leaves. But he hasn't stolen Rona's skin, and they both believe their relationship is different. Making a family together seems easy and obvious--until time, children, and a threat to Rona's home shore endanger everything they've promised to each other.

Most selkie stories are about the beginning or the end, but this one is about the middle. How do you live with a family past of people disappearing into the sea? How do you avoid the same wrong act everyone has committed before you? And what is love--for a spouse, a child, a mortal world--in the face of history?

Set in a mythic, contemporary Pacific Northwest shaped by Native and European storytelling, artist communes, and corporate fakelore, The Sea-Glass Shore is a domestic fable about the power of the past and the making of a daily present.

Author Biography

Julie Salmon Kelleher grew up in five different towns in Washington State. She holds a B.A. from Reed College and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and currently teaches courses on humanities, nature literature, and fantasy writing in the Honors College at Western Washington University. Granddaughter to an Irish lawyer, an English teacher, a farm wife, and a logger turned dairyman, she lives with her family in a Cascadian college town, midway between the mountains and the sea.