July 2, 2026

The Seas, by Samantha Hunt

I’ve been waiting to read The Seas, by Samantha Hunt, ever since Mikka Jacobsen championed it on my podcast as book about a woman wildly wanting, longing. And feeling as I do about water and seas, albeit inland ones, I was drawn to this story of a woman who is sure she’s a mermaid, although her grasp on reality is dubious—or is it? A fairy tale, a fable, I read this short novel with Dar Williams’ song “The Ocean” in my head, a perfect complement, a song I used to listen to in the throes of unrequited love, which is where Hunt’s narrator finds herself too, infatuated with an Iraq war veteran who is only a little less too old for her now that she’s finally come of age. She lives in a seaside town so far north that all the highways run south, a place whose main claim to fame is its rates of alcoholism, and she and her mother are waiting for her father to return from the sea that took him years ago. Weird, wild and spellbinding, I really liked it.