Press Clippings

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.