The Sea Between Two Shores - by Tanis Rideout (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From the bestselling author of Above All Things and inspired by real events, this powerful novel follows two families brought together to reckon with what it means to make amends--for historic wrongs and the wrongs we commit against the ones we love. For readers of Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, Esi Edugyan's Washington Black, Joan Thomas's Five Wives, and Michael Christie's Greenwood.

On a small island in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, the Tabés are a family mourning the death of their son in the aftermath of a devastating cyclone, while worrying over the looming departure of another. Desperate to find a way to change their fates, David Tabé places a phone call halfway around the world to the Stewarts, a family bound to his own through a fraught connection in the distant past--their ancestors met on the island two hundred years earlier, with calamitous results.

In Toronto, the Stewarts are themselves locked in mourning after the accidental drowning of their youngest son. When Michelle Stewart receives David's invitation to participate in a reconciliation ceremony to put the spirits of their respective ancestors to rest, she accepts in a desperate effort to save herself and her family. As the ceremony approaches, the Tabés and the Stewarts will uncover their shared losses and failings, their fragile hopes for what a better future might hold, and the wounds that stand in the way of freeing themselves from the legacy of past betrayals.

Heart-wrenching, thought-provoking, and morally complex, The Sea Between Two Shores immerses us in the lives of two families connected as much by their desire for healing as by the actions of their ancestors. It is an extraordinary meditation on the complications of history, the possibilities for redemption, and the meaning of the stories we tell ourselves.

Review Quotes

"Her voice both intimate and wise, Tanis Rideout traverses the textures and echoes of grief, asking difficult and important questions: How does loss imprint itself upon our hearts? Can we find meaning through forgiveness? What is it to both respect our histories and write a future of integrity and compassion? Her language is poetic, her vision resonant. This book speaks powerfully to the challenges we all confront."
--Vincent Lam, author of The Headmaster's Wager

"In this gorgeously written, carefully researched novel, Tanis Rideout brings to vivid life a remote island community as it copes with the arrival of a pair of missionaries, and then as both parties' descendants, two hundred years later, seek to reconcile the aftermath of that earlier engagement. A thoughtful, absorbing meditation on loss and the resiliency of the human spirit."
--Cathy Marie Buchanan, author of The Painted Girls

"A thoroughly captivating novel."
--North Bay Nipissing

About the Author

TANIS RIDEOUT's internationally acclaimed first novel, Above All Things, was a national bestseller, named to numerous best books of the year lists, and published in several languages around the world. It was awarded the Premio ITAS del Libro di Montagna and was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her new novel is The Sea Between Two Shores. She is also the author of the poetry collection Arguments with the Lake. Born in Belgium, she grew up in Bermuda and in Kingston, Ontario, and now lives in Los Angeles.