num_pages: 668
description: From the opening line--"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last"--you will know that you are in the hands of a masterful storyteller and in the company of a fascinating woman hero. Inspired by a brief passage in Melville's Moby-Dick, where Captain Ahab speaks passionately of his young wife on Nantucket, Una Spenser's moving tale "is very much Naslund's own and can be enjoyed independently of its source." (Newsday) The daughter of a tyrannical father, Una leaves the violent Kentucky frontier for the peace of a New England lighthouse island, where she simultaneously falls in love with two young men. Disguised as a boy, she earns a berth on a whaling ship where she encounters the power of nature, death, and madness, and gets her first glimpse of Captain Ahab. As Naslund portrays Una's love for the tragically driven Ahab, she magnificently renders a real, living marriage and offers a new perspective on the American experience. Immediately immersed in this world, the reader experiences a brilliantly written, vibrant, uplifting novel--a bright book of life.
language: English
title: Ahab's Wife: Or, the Star-Gazer
titlecomplete: Ahab's Wife: Or, the Star-Gazer
characters: Giles Bonebright, Kit Sparrow, Frederick Douglass, Una Spenser, Captain Ahab
genres: Fiction, Historical, Book Club, Literature, Adult, Novels, Adult Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Unfinished
ratings_count: 44332
places: The United States of America
awards: awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Book Sense Book of the Year Award
category: Adult, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Alabama Author Award
category: Fiction
publisher: HarpPeren