Kip Robinson Greenthal’s debut novel, Shoal Water, winner of the Landmark Prize for Fiction, was released on Oct. 12 by Homebound Publications. Greenthal will give a reading and be interviewed by local author, Iris Graville, at a virtual event at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 4, sponsored by the Lopez Island Library. Greenthal, a former education director for Seattle Arts & Lectures, received the Landmark Prize for Fiction in 2020 sponsored by Homebound Publications. She lives on Lopez Island with her husband, Stanley Greenthal.
In 1971, disillusioned by the Vietnam war and troubled by their own past, Kate and her boyfriend, Andy, leave New York City for a remote Nova Scotia fishing village where Andy spent summers as a child, to build a new future together. Moving into Andy’s old house—supposedly haunted by the ghost of fisherman Basil Tannard, who believed a selkie saved him from drowning one storm-tossed night—they fall into the rhythms of the tightly knit community, which includes Andy’s childhood best friend, Ivan. The powerful undercurrents of past demons and an unforeseen love triangle move silently under the surface for years of marriage and children, until the wave breaks upon them all with shattering consequences.
Greenthal lived in Nova Scotia for 12 years. She created her characters based on what she learned from living in an inshore fishing community and working at the local library for nine years, where she met and worked with many local Nova Scotians. Her characters are a collage of these people.
Shelf Awareness, a national bi-weekly publication for readers and people in the book business, writes: “Greenthal creates an atmosphere as thick as the fog blanketing the harbor with her deep knowledge of Nova Scotian people, folklore and sea life. Her finely drawn and sympathetic characters are rendered in lovely prose that elevates their suffering without descending into pathos. Shoal Water is a highly attuned and poetic first novel of people finding their paths amid forces beyond their control. —Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter, Denver, Colo.”
To attend the Nov. 4 event, please register on the Lopez Island Library website: http://lopezlibrary.org/greenthal-shoal-water/
