Joyce finds herself living the merciless life of a Greek peasant woman, at the command of people steeped in religion, misogyny, superstition, and their experience of war.".

The duality of maritime family life, the relationship between reconstruction and discourse and the symbolic status of the seafarer’s wife are at the core of this book, which brings maritime women’s experiences to the fore, widening the perspective of maritime history. Based on the collected life stories of seafarers’ wives from the Åland Islands in Baltic Sea, Hanna Hagmark-Cooper draws attention to the cyclical nature of maritime family life and to the seafarers’ wives’ perception of leading two parallel lives: one when they are on their own and one with their husbands at home. The author considers how discourses change over time and colour narratives, and she investigates the women’s attitudes to the myths surrounding the image of the seafarer’s wife.

Tanley's boring life on Saint Michael's Mount gets a lot more complicated when a man is washed up on the beach. With her father dead, the neighbor smuggling, and a knife wound in the man's shoulder she's all alone with a whole lot of trouble. At least she's not stuck getting rid of a body when he wakes up at long last, but delivering papers for the government to help pay the debt after the war with Napoleon makes the stakes higher than just a little smuggling. Alone with James though temptation is hard to resist, if only getting caught didn't bring up a whole new set of problems.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year “Brilliantly breathes life not only into the perils of living at sea, but also into the hidden dangers of domesticity, parenthood, and marriage. What a smart, swift, and thrilling novel.” —Lauren Groff, author of Florida Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out 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 a gust of energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being at sea. The vast horizons and isolated islands offer Juliet and Michael reprieve – until they are tested by the unforeseen. A transporting novel about marriage, family and love in a time of unprecedented turmoil, Sea Wife is unforgettable in its power and astonishingly perceptive in its portrayal of optimism, disillusionment, and survival.