Press Clippings

There is no water view from Beth Powning's farmhouse, but the author still feels the tidal pull from her Markhamville home. The seafaring, shipbuilding past of the Bay of Fundy deeply inspired her latest work, 'The Sea Captain's Wife,' an ambitious historical novel rich in adventure.

Click Here to read the entire article on the Telegraph Journal.

Maritime-based literary writer Beth Powning, author of the successful Hatbox Letters and the nature-themed memoirEdge Seasons, proves her versatility with her latest novel,The Sea Captain's Wife.

Part historical fiction, part love story and part tragedy, it is bound together by the strengths of Powning's signature nature writing.

Beth Powning’s second novel is the affecting and engaging story of a young woman seeking her place in the world – a place away from the loneliness and boredom of a small Canadian village.

Azuba is the young wife of Nathaniel, an older man who captains the Traveller, a commercial ship. The couple originally planned to travel together, but when Azuba becomes pregnant, Nathaniel realizes he cannot jeopardize his wife’s safety or that of his unborn child by taking her aboard his ship.

Author Beth Powning launched her new novel, The Sea Captain's Wife (Knopf Canada), at the Royal Canadian Legion in Sussex, New Brunswick on Jan. 15. The launch featured Powning and friends in period costumes, the singing of sea shanties, a miniature lighthouse, artificial fog, and the author herself reading from the book....

Click here to read full Blog Post on the Quill and Quire.

The Sea Captain's Wife is the story of a New Brunswick woman's sojourn into uncharted waters. Beth Powning's latest novel is a herstory, a seafaring tale about a woman embracing her own worth, resuscitating her marriage and learning to navigate unforeseen storms.

 

Set in the 1860's, an era when women of a certain class were expected to dine on a steady diet of church, family, sewing circles and quilting bees, Azuba Bradstock is a woman in need of "nourishment for the mind and soul." She is the wife of a sea captain, a man 10 years her senior for whom "the world began at the harbour's mouth."

Azuba is an intelligent and resourceful heroine whose narrative voice carries Powning's latest book.

Click here to read full article on The Telegraph Journal

Whelan's Cove is a place of departures."

So begins Beth Powning's latest novel, The Sea Captain's Wife, a tale of the eternals of departures, relationships, and growth, revealed against the historical backdrop of the seagoing past of nineteenth century New Brunswick. The reader departs the present day, departs the New Brunswick in which we live, just as the titular character, Azuba, departs the life she knows, the Victorian New Brunswick familiar to her, to embark on her dramatic journey. And we, in turn, escape into her well-crafted world for a few hundred pages.

Click here to read the full review on the Telegraph Journal

New Brunswick's storied age of sail came alive Jan. 15 at the Sussex Legion as Beth Powning launched her new historical novel, The Sea Captain's Wife. More than 500 people attended, enjoying chowder, historical displays and nautical art that complemented the reading and book signing. The author, family and friends even donned period dress for an extra element of authenticity. Ahoy!

Click here to view article on the Telegraph Journal

YOU MIGHT NEVER guess that Sussex, N.B.-based writer and photographer Beth Powning was originally "from away."

Charming, genuine and forthright, the author of such critically acclaimed works as Shadow Child, Edge Seasons and The Hatbox Letters is quick with a colourful Maritimes anecdote when we meet for drinks at a Halifax hotel.

Click here to read full article on the Chronicle Herald.

The daughter of a ship builder, Azuba Galloway grows up in a small town on the Bay of Fundy watching ships go out to sea. Studying the captains as they lead their wives and children on board, she fantasizes about their endless adventures in foreign ports.

Some day, the young Azuba tells herself, that will be me, sailing around the world with my husband and family. When she falls in love, at 19, it's with 28-year-old Nathaniel Bradstock, the youngest of three sea-captain brothers. Nathaniel shares Azuba's dream of a shipboard marriage. That is, he does until he sees his wedding present from his new father-in-law: a veritable palace where Azuba can live comfortably with a houseful of children while her husband is tending to his trade.

Click here to read full article on the Edmonton Journal

Readers will find a streak of the poetic in all of Beth Powning's work, including her new novel, The Sea Captain's Wife. As in her two wonderfully wrought memoirs, Edge Seasons and Shadow Child and in her widely lauded first novel, The Hatbox Letters, the New Brunswick writer proves a master of descriptive dexterity. Her keen eye for landscape and for detail give her work a rewarding resonance.

 Click here to read the full article on the London Free Press