The Sea-Glass Shore

"As beautiful and haunting as the coast it inhabits."

—Jared Pechaček, author of The West Passage

"Julie Salmon Kelleher has reinvented the selkie myth by doing what oceans do best: churning up life, death, grief, love and magic in waves. The Sea-Glass Shore leaves questions about identity, family, and loss at the lip between land and water. No one's life turns out how they planned, and all our leavings are becomings, all our endings are beginnings. This story brought my heart home. Home is fluid. A brilliant swim."

—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Reading the Waves

"An earnest tribute to the Pacific Northwest and its complex geographic, historical, and political climate, the work captures a woman, a family, and a town in transition, alongside the questions that pockmark their road forward. It is a lens into nonconformist families, the joys and challenges of parenting and growing up, and the processing of enormous loss. For readers familiar with the area and its lore, especially, it should spark nostalgia, inspiration, and conversation."

—Independent Book Review

"A myth that both loves and resists its mythologies, The Sea-Glass Shore moves with the translucent, melodic inevitability of life, or a tide. Julie Salmon Kelleher's glass-clear language beads like rain, and the story it tells is warm and soft as the secrets that hold us together as people, as families, as stories."

—Kathleen Jennings, author of Flyaway and Honeyeater

"Julie Salmon Kelleher has performed a miracle in The Sea-Glass Shore, translating the language of sea and salt and tide so easily, I have to wonder how she knows. Does she have her own sealskin coat? Yet she is just as fluent in the language of family, allowing imperfect love to grow as a garden does, flush then fallow, moving with the seasons of life on land as gracefully as she lives in the ever-present now of the sea. This is a remarkable book and a writer to watch!"

—Michelle Ruiz Keil, author of Summer in the City of Roses

"Kelleher’s gorgeous prose drew me into her selkie tale as effortlessly as the tide itself. I was enraptured by this story of one man’s struggle not to hold on too tightly to the ones he loves—haunting and unforgettable."

—Martine Fournier Watson, author of The Dream Peddler

“Julie Salmon Kelleher’s debut novel is deliciously wonderful! I devoured this book in a few days (and late nights!), wanting more with each page. The contemporary mythological storytelling is gorgeously effective for Rona and Jack’s legend! I can’t wait to read more from Julie!”

—Annie Carl, editor of Soul Jar

"Melding the mythic and the modern, looking backward while peering forward, Julie Salmon Kelleher’s gorgeous prose ebbs and flows with the current, carrying relational detritus out to sea and returning unexpected gifts of understanding and acceptance to shore. Her debut novel is rich, enchanting, surprising, and seductive. I loved this book from start to finish.”

—Nancy Townsley, author of Sunshine Girl and Carson McClintock Is Not Dead Yet

“With pitch-perfect characterization of an unconventional, modern family and all its foibles, the novel explores the complexities of marriage, parenthood and the ‘messy middle’ of life. Author Julie Salmon Kelleher’s prose sings, sometimes like a lullaby and sometimes like a siren’s call, always poignant but alternating between notes of time-worn wisdom, quiet humor, painful longing, and stubborn hope. The Sea-Glass Shore is a contemporary fable about how to hold onto the people, places, and things you love most by letting them go—be they spouses, growing children, or simply all your best laid plans.”

—Jamie M. Boyd, author of “The Wilding Year”