Ursula Doyle of Little, Brown’s Fleet imprint acquired UK and British Commonwealth rights to Amity Gaige’s gripping new novel SEA WIFE in a deal with Isobel Dixon of Blake Friedmann on behalf of Kim Witherspoon of Inkwell Management. Jordan Pavlin of Knopf is publishing in the US and Fleet will publish in hardback in the UK in July 2020.
SEA WIFE is page-turning novel about a marriage on the rocks, and a family literally adrift – as a husband and wife escape suburbia with their young children for a year-long sailing trip that upends all of their lives.
Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. With their two kids – Sybil, age seven, and George, age two – Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their forty-four-foot sailboat awaits them.
The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given new energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being feral children at sea. Despite the stresses of being novice sailors, the family learns to crew the boat together on the ever-changing ocean. The vast horizons and isolated islands offer Juliet and Michael reprieve – until they are tested by the unforeseen.
SEA WIFE is told in gripping dual perspectives: Juliet’s first person narration, after the journey, as she struggles to come to terms with the life-changing events that unfolded at sea, and Michael’s captain’s log, which provides a riveting, slow-motion account of these same inexorable events, a dialogue that reveals the fault lines created by personal history and political divisions.
SEA WIFE is a transporting novel about marriage, family and love in a time of unprecedented turmoil. It is unforgettable in its power and astonishingly perceptive in its portrayal of optimism, disillusionment, and survival.
Praise for SEA WIFE
‘Stunning… Gaige tows you to tragedy with the graceful crawl of a poet and the motorboat intensity of a suspense author. And yet, when you find yourself at the deep end of this book, gasping for breath, you will still be shocked by what you find at the bottom.’ — New York Times
‘Profound and universal… SEA WIFE achieves a lovely balance between the real and the metaphoric.’ — Wall Street Journal
‘Splendid… profound. Every element of this impressive novel clicks into a dazzling, heartbreaking whole.’ — Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
‘Gripping… A powerful take on a marriage on the rocks.’ — Kirkus Reviews
‘SEA WIFE is brilliant, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful.’ — BookPage (starred review)
‘Gaige is a superb maritime writer.’ — Boston Globe
‘Gaige’s razor-sharp novel is wise to marital and broader politics. But it’s also such gripping escapism that it feels like a lifeboat.’ — People Magazine (Book of the Week)
‘SEA WIFE is a moody and compelling literary novel about the hidden depths of a marriage. It’s the intricate design of this tale — which Gaige pilots expertly — and its eloquent revelations about the inner workings of the Partlow’s relationship that distinguish Sea Wife. The final resolution of the Partlow’s differences is achieved in a fashion that even the most sharp-eyed reader won’t be able to spot, looming in the distance.’ — Washington Post
‘In her new novel, Sea Wife, Amity Gaige depicts the journey from a dual point of view, interspersing the wife’s recollection s of how it all went wrong with diary entries from the husband, both of which cut to the heart of mundane marital strife and the legacy of trauma.’ — Elle Magazine, ‘Best Books of 2020 So Far’ (#2)
About Amity Gaige
Amity Gaige is the author of four novels, O MY DARLING, THE FOLDED WORLD, SCHRODER, and SEA WIFE.
She is the winner of a Fulbright Fellowship, and fellowships at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies. In 2016, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction. Her previous novel SCHRODER has been translated into eighteen languages, and was shortlisted for The Folio Prize in the UK in 2014 and for L’Express Reader’s Prize in France. It was named one of Best Books of 2013 by The New York Times Book Review, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Kirkus, Cosmopolitan, and Publisher’s Weekly, among many others.
The longtime Visiting Writer at Amherst College, she now teaches creative writing at Yale. Her short stories, essays, and book reviews have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Die Welt, Harper’s Bazaar, The Yale Review, Slate.com, One Story, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She has appeared at numerous conferences, festivals, and on radio shows such as NPR.
She currently lives with her family in West Hartford, Connecticut. She had to learn to sail in order to write SEA WIFE, but has decided that she will stick to writing about it.