Finding “Wild and Distant Seas” with Tara Karr Roberts
Tara Karr Roberts has written a wildly original novel in Wild and Distant Seas. Loosely
tied with the plot and characters from Moby-Dick, the book begins in 1849, in Nantucket,
where Evangeline Hussey owns and manages Try Pots Inn. She also has the
extraordinary ability to see and alter recent memories of those in her vicinity. One day, a
man named Ishmael shows up at the Inn. The choices that Evangeline makes at this
point have enormous consequences for the next three generations of women, and men,
in her family. Rich in historical details and research, Wild and Distant Seas takes the
reader on a glorious adventure through time as well as all through the globe.
Besides her life as a fiction writer, Tara is also a freelance writer and editor. She is a
lifelong Idahoan, a wife, a mum to two sons, and an ice cream aficionado.
On behalf of Crab Creek Review, this interview was conducted by Sayantani Dasgupta over email.
Sayantani Dasgupta: Your novel is dedicated to the women in your family and the
important characters are all women. Was this planned from the very beginning? Or were
you surprised when the book took on this slant? I know the initial idea was sparked
through a class you took at the University of Idaho.
Tara Karr Roberts: The seed of the story began with one woman: Mrs. Hussey, the
Nantucket innkeeper who makes a brief and comical appearance in the early chapters
of Moby-Dick and is the only woman with any significant speaking role in the whole
giant novel. I encountered her in a 19th Century Novels class at University of Idaho (U of I),
which I was taking to finish a (very gradually earned) master’s degree. I’d been skeptical about
Moby-Dick and avoided reading it before then, but its weirdness captured me, though
like many readers I noticed the glaring absence of women. I talked my professor into
letting me write Mrs. Hussey’s side of the story for my final project. I liked the idea that
Ishmael was a naive young man who really couldn’t imagine the inner life of this
woman, because he was in a culture where he wasn’t encouraged or expected to. But
he was missing a lot.
When I started imagining the story as a novel, I knew I wanted it to keep that focus on
women and other people who are shoved to the background in so many stories,
including children. And I knew I wanted to write a story about many generations of
women—my family is tight-knit and from a rural area, so I grew up surrounded by
aunts and great-aunts and grandmas, and even one great-great-grandma who lived
until I was 11. I’d always loved hearing their stories, but noticed as I got older how those
stories changed depending on who was telling them and who they were telling them to,
and how those stories transformed through generations. I wanted to explore that idea.
SD: The book travels to places such as Nantucket and Florence, places you’ve been to
as well. However, it’s one thing to visit a place at present and quite another to capture
its essence at a totally different time. What were some of your strategies?
TKR: When I started writing, I hadn’t been to Nantucket or Florence‚—I’d barely been
out of the Western U.S.!—but I knew I wanted to write a world-spanning story. This
was in large part because of its roots in Moby-Dick, but also because I really believe in
the idea of writing what you’re curious about, not just what you already know.
That felt overwhelming, evening frightening, at times, but I figured out two things: One, I
love doing research. My academic and professional backgrounds are in journalism,
literature and history, so I enjoy digging through archives and conducting interviews and
hunting down little details that helped me imagine those different places and times. Two,
I figured out I didn’t need to approach historical fiction as if it were journalism or history.
One of the concepts that stuck with me most from my undergraduate fiction classes
(with Daniel Orozco, now retired from the U of I) was world-building. I love reading
science fiction and fantasy, and I started thinking of the past as a place you can never
really go to, the same as an imaginary world or another planet. The writer’s job is to
make it feel real to the reader. That helped me decide which historical details I wanted
to include and which I could let go of, and where I wanted to be as accurate as possible
versus when I was willing to sacrifice accuracy for the needs of the story.
Geraldine Brooks captures this idea well: “The thing that most attracts me to historical
fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and
then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out
for sure.”
I did try to travel to the places in the book when it was feasible. I received an Idaho
Commission on the Arts grant to conduct research in Nantucket, and spending time on
the island especially helped me understand its natural environment. I included Florence
as a bit of a favor to myself: while I was writing Wild and Distant Seas I spent a summer
in Italy through a university program, and I fell in love with the city. But even when
writing the scenes set in Moscow, Idaho, where I’ve lived for 20 years, I had to blend my
observations and experiences with research and imagination to write about the places
as they were in the past—or at least could have been.
SD: I have found that Moby-Dick elicits strong reactions from contemporary readers.
Either they love it and treat it as the most sacred piece of writing, or they are
overwhelmed by it and can’t finish it. On the eve of your book’s release, were you
nervous about how readers would associate (or disassociate) it with Moby-Dick?
TKR: Oh, definitely. The way I usually describe my relationship with Moby-Dick as a
reader is that I love a third of it, I don’t care for a third of it, and I’m bewildered by a third
of it. I don’t consider it sacred, though I do consider it deeply interesting (both as a story
and as a literary artifact) and worth reading and revisiting. But I also spent the first 30-
something years of my life avoiding reading it, so I understand that it’s not everyone’s
cup of tea. I was careful out of the gate to write so readers wouldn’t need to have read
or liked Moby-Dick to be immersed in the story. Even people who have read Moby-Dick
aren’t likely to remember Mrs. Hussey and the other characters I draw from the book--
some of them, like Tistig, a Wampanog woman, are only mentioned in a line or two.
I’ve been pleased to hear from readers on both sides of the Moby-Dick aisle that they
enjoyed my book. I think even the most avid fans are open to the idea of exploring this
story they love in new ways.
SD: You’re also a writer of creative nonfiction and journalism and yet your first book is a
work of historical fiction. How did these genres bleed into your writing of fiction?
TKR: I’ve wanted to be a novelist since I was a very young child, but I always had a
sense that I’d need a day job, and I wanted it to be writing-related, too. In college I spent
more time at the student newspaper and magazine than I did in my classes, and my
career has stayed in the world of writing for and teaching about media. (Right now I
write communications and marketing materials for universities, mostly as a science
writer.)
For a long time I’d get frustrated, thinking I was wasting my time and energy on the
writing that paid the bills. When I did write creatively, I tended to stick to creative
nonfiction, which I do love, but which also felt safer. When I hit my thirties and started to
tiptoe back into fiction, I discovered how everything else I’d been doing had been
strengthening me as a writer all along. Whenever I talk to young aspiring novelists now,
I tell them they should be working at their student newspaper or otherwise seeking out
writing that requires them to listen to other people deeply and get a sense of how they
talk, think, and interact with the world. Media writing also encourages writers to
understand that they have readers—and that they need good editors. As a bonus, it
teaches you that sometimes you just have to sit down and work. Writing doesn’t happen
by magic (though of course we all wish it would).
SD: Who are your literary heroes? In what ways did they (or their writing techniques)
work themselves into your novel?
TKR: I could list so many beloved writers here, but I’ll narrow it down to two who
particularly influenced this novel.
Lauren Groff’s short stories and novels always astound me. I admire how she explores
the tensions of being a woman and mother, and how richly she writes characters who
are children—both ideas that were incredibly important in writing Wild and Distant
Seas. Her short story “The Midnight Zone,” about a mother who injures herself while
alone in the Florida scrubland with her two young sons, illustrates her skills so well.
When I first read it, my boys were the same age as the sons in the story, and I kept
holding my breath while I was reading, just so absorbed in what was happening and
stunned by how familiar it felt, like she’d been crawling around in the darkest parts of my
mind. I’ve read it probably a dozen times since and tried to learn from how she selects
images, how she writes a meaning-rich environment, how she shapes her narrator’s
voice, how she incorporates uncertainty and denial, and how she builds her world.
Kelly Link is also a big influence. I was pretty immersed in realist short fiction as an
undergrad, and I spent years trying to force myself to write serious stories. But I’m a
weirdo at heart, and I want there to be magic in the world and in my writing. When I
started writing Wild and Distant Seas, I put magic in it just because I wanted to, and
figured I’d find the reasons later. Kelly’s work shows how the weird and fantastical and
unsettling can be conduits for exploring “real” relationships and emotions, but also how
odd worlds are worth reading about in their own right. Her story “The Faery Handbag”
inspired me because it’s about how families pass stories on to their children, how
difficult it can be for a child to parse out what’s true, what truth in storytelling really
means … and whether truth really matters.
SD: It was amply evident to me when I was reading your novel that you truly enjoyed
the process of research, especially when it came to geography. Could you speak to
your interest in this subject, and how that both inspires and fuels your writing?
TKR: I grew up in rural Idaho and didn’t leave the Pacific Northwest until I was a
teenager, but my family is full of teachers and librarians, so they read me books from
the day I was born and hooked me on learning about places I’d never been. My love of
science fiction and fantasy came from this—but also that love of geography. I collected
maps as a kid and was pretty obsessed with all the places I could go someday, and
figured out that writing was another way to learn about them. I remember setting a story
I wrote in sixth grade in North Dakota, just because it wasn’t Idaho (but I figured it
wasn’t too far off).
I loved exploring (literally and figuratively) new cities and countries and landscapes in
my research for Wild and Distant Seas. I spent a huge amount of time with historical
maps and photos, as well as contemporary photos and videos that people have
uploaded to places like Google Maps and YouTube. I mapped out my characters’
movements and studied maps to decide where to send them. To pick the Brazil location,
I sat down with my globe and a map of 19th century shipping routes.
I’ll also give credit here to my younger son, Danny, who was six when I started writing
Wild and Distant Seas and is thirteen now. His own obsession with maps and countries
started while I was writing and editing the final two parts of my novel, and there is
definitely a bit of him in my character Annie. Really, my kids are an enormous motivator
for me in every aspect of my writing—I want to give them the world, and this is one
way to do it.
SD: What are some writing habits/practices/ rituals that you didn’t have before but that
became a part of your life while you were writing Wild and Distant Seas? Or perhaps
what are the writing practices and habits that you have developed now as you are (no
doubt) working towards your next book? On that note, can you also share with us what
your next book will be about?
TKR: Writing Wild and Distant Seas taught me a lot about my limits. People have asked
how I managed to write a novel while I was working full time and my kids were small --
the truth is, I often did it by sacrificing my health. In the past few years I’ve worked on
changing that. One big thing is learning to write using voice-to-text software. I have a
disability that causes joint pain and weakness in my arms and hands, and writing with
my voice, as odd as it feels sometimes, allows me to write more with less pain. I’ve also
discovered that sleeping well is an essential part of my writing process. It often means
that I write less than I’d like to, but I am in a much better headspace when I do.
I’m also working on improving my organization, which I think every writer is. One thing I
learned during Wild and Distant Seas was how to build a spreadsheet that calculates
characters’ ages at different times. For the book I’m working on now, I have an even
more elaborate timeline spreadsheet, and I’m much stricter with how I organize my
notes. I write linearly—I don’t skip ahead and write future scenes—but I have one
document where I can leave notes for for the future.
So far, being more organized seems to be helping me have a better sense of plot with
this new project, which is good because plot is not my strength. What I’ll tell you about
this one so far is that it involves North Idaho, country music, and aliens—or at least
people who very sincerely believe in them. It has some thematic overlap with Wild and
Distant Seas, in that it centers the concerns of women and parents/grandparents and explores
questions about identity and family, but the tone and structure are really different. I think
it’s funnier, too!
tied with the plot and characters from Moby-Dick, the book begins in 1849, in Nantucket,
where Evangeline Hussey owns and manages Try Pots Inn. She also has the
extraordinary ability to see and alter recent memories of those in her vicinity. One day, a
man named Ishmael shows up at the Inn. The choices that Evangeline makes at this
point have enormous consequences for the next three generations of women, and men,
in her family. Rich in historical details and research, Wild and Distant Seas takes the
reader on a glorious adventure through time as well as all through the globe.
Besides her life as a fiction writer, Tara is also a freelance writer and editor. She is a
lifelong Idahoan, a wife, a mum to two sons, and an ice cream aficionado.
On behalf of Crab Creek Review, this interview was conducted by Sayantani Dasgupta over email.
Sayantani Dasgupta: Your novel is dedicated to the women in your family and the
important characters are all women. Was this planned from the very beginning? Or were
you surprised when the book took on this slant? I know the initial idea was sparked
through a class you took at the University of Idaho.
Tara Karr Roberts: The seed of the story began with one woman: Mrs. Hussey, the
Nantucket innkeeper who makes a brief and comical appearance in the early chapters
of Moby-Dick and is the only woman with any significant speaking role in the whole
giant novel. I encountered her in a 19th Century Novels class at University of Idaho (U of I),
which I was taking to finish a (very gradually earned) master’s degree. I’d been skeptical about
Moby-Dick and avoided reading it before then, but its weirdness captured me, though
like many readers I noticed the glaring absence of women. I talked my professor into
letting me write Mrs. Hussey’s side of the story for my final project. I liked the idea that
Ishmael was a naive young man who really couldn’t imagine the inner life of this
woman, because he was in a culture where he wasn’t encouraged or expected to. But
he was missing a lot.
When I started imagining the story as a novel, I knew I wanted it to keep that focus on
women and other people who are shoved to the background in so many stories,
including children. And I knew I wanted to write a story about many generations of
women—my family is tight-knit and from a rural area, so I grew up surrounded by
aunts and great-aunts and grandmas, and even one great-great-grandma who lived
until I was 11. I’d always loved hearing their stories, but noticed as I got older how those
stories changed depending on who was telling them and who they were telling them to,
and how those stories transformed through generations. I wanted to explore that idea.
SD: The book travels to places such as Nantucket and Florence, places you’ve been to
as well. However, it’s one thing to visit a place at present and quite another to capture
its essence at a totally different time. What were some of your strategies?
TKR: When I started writing, I hadn’t been to Nantucket or Florence‚—I’d barely been
out of the Western U.S.!—but I knew I wanted to write a world-spanning story. This
was in large part because of its roots in Moby-Dick, but also because I really believe in
the idea of writing what you’re curious about, not just what you already know.
That felt overwhelming, evening frightening, at times, but I figured out two things: One, I
love doing research. My academic and professional backgrounds are in journalism,
literature and history, so I enjoy digging through archives and conducting interviews and
hunting down little details that helped me imagine those different places and times. Two,
I figured out I didn’t need to approach historical fiction as if it were journalism or history.
One of the concepts that stuck with me most from my undergraduate fiction classes
(with Daniel Orozco, now retired from the U of I) was world-building. I love reading
science fiction and fantasy, and I started thinking of the past as a place you can never
really go to, the same as an imaginary world or another planet. The writer’s job is to
make it feel real to the reader. That helped me decide which historical details I wanted
to include and which I could let go of, and where I wanted to be as accurate as possible
versus when I was willing to sacrifice accuracy for the needs of the story.
Geraldine Brooks captures this idea well: “The thing that most attracts me to historical
fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and
then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out
for sure.”
I did try to travel to the places in the book when it was feasible. I received an Idaho
Commission on the Arts grant to conduct research in Nantucket, and spending time on
the island especially helped me understand its natural environment. I included Florence
as a bit of a favor to myself: while I was writing Wild and Distant Seas I spent a summer
in Italy through a university program, and I fell in love with the city. But even when
writing the scenes set in Moscow, Idaho, where I’ve lived for 20 years, I had to blend my
observations and experiences with research and imagination to write about the places
as they were in the past—or at least could have been.
SD: I have found that Moby-Dick elicits strong reactions from contemporary readers.
Either they love it and treat it as the most sacred piece of writing, or they are
overwhelmed by it and can’t finish it. On the eve of your book’s release, were you
nervous about how readers would associate (or disassociate) it with Moby-Dick?
TKR: Oh, definitely. The way I usually describe my relationship with Moby-Dick as a
reader is that I love a third of it, I don’t care for a third of it, and I’m bewildered by a third
of it. I don’t consider it sacred, though I do consider it deeply interesting (both as a story
and as a literary artifact) and worth reading and revisiting. But I also spent the first 30-
something years of my life avoiding reading it, so I understand that it’s not everyone’s
cup of tea. I was careful out of the gate to write so readers wouldn’t need to have read
or liked Moby-Dick to be immersed in the story. Even people who have read Moby-Dick
aren’t likely to remember Mrs. Hussey and the other characters I draw from the book--
some of them, like Tistig, a Wampanog woman, are only mentioned in a line or two.
I’ve been pleased to hear from readers on both sides of the Moby-Dick aisle that they
enjoyed my book. I think even the most avid fans are open to the idea of exploring this
story they love in new ways.
SD: You’re also a writer of creative nonfiction and journalism and yet your first book is a
work of historical fiction. How did these genres bleed into your writing of fiction?
TKR: I’ve wanted to be a novelist since I was a very young child, but I always had a
sense that I’d need a day job, and I wanted it to be writing-related, too. In college I spent
more time at the student newspaper and magazine than I did in my classes, and my
career has stayed in the world of writing for and teaching about media. (Right now I
write communications and marketing materials for universities, mostly as a science
writer.)
For a long time I’d get frustrated, thinking I was wasting my time and energy on the
writing that paid the bills. When I did write creatively, I tended to stick to creative
nonfiction, which I do love, but which also felt safer. When I hit my thirties and started to
tiptoe back into fiction, I discovered how everything else I’d been doing had been
strengthening me as a writer all along. Whenever I talk to young aspiring novelists now,
I tell them they should be working at their student newspaper or otherwise seeking out
writing that requires them to listen to other people deeply and get a sense of how they
talk, think, and interact with the world. Media writing also encourages writers to
understand that they have readers—and that they need good editors. As a bonus, it
teaches you that sometimes you just have to sit down and work. Writing doesn’t happen
by magic (though of course we all wish it would).
SD: Who are your literary heroes? In what ways did they (or their writing techniques)
work themselves into your novel?
TKR: I could list so many beloved writers here, but I’ll narrow it down to two who
particularly influenced this novel.
Lauren Groff’s short stories and novels always astound me. I admire how she explores
the tensions of being a woman and mother, and how richly she writes characters who
are children—both ideas that were incredibly important in writing Wild and Distant
Seas. Her short story “The Midnight Zone,” about a mother who injures herself while
alone in the Florida scrubland with her two young sons, illustrates her skills so well.
When I first read it, my boys were the same age as the sons in the story, and I kept
holding my breath while I was reading, just so absorbed in what was happening and
stunned by how familiar it felt, like she’d been crawling around in the darkest parts of my
mind. I’ve read it probably a dozen times since and tried to learn from how she selects
images, how she writes a meaning-rich environment, how she shapes her narrator’s
voice, how she incorporates uncertainty and denial, and how she builds her world.
Kelly Link is also a big influence. I was pretty immersed in realist short fiction as an
undergrad, and I spent years trying to force myself to write serious stories. But I’m a
weirdo at heart, and I want there to be magic in the world and in my writing. When I
started writing Wild and Distant Seas, I put magic in it just because I wanted to, and
figured I’d find the reasons later. Kelly’s work shows how the weird and fantastical and
unsettling can be conduits for exploring “real” relationships and emotions, but also how
odd worlds are worth reading about in their own right. Her story “The Faery Handbag”
inspired me because it’s about how families pass stories on to their children, how
difficult it can be for a child to parse out what’s true, what truth in storytelling really
means … and whether truth really matters.
SD: It was amply evident to me when I was reading your novel that you truly enjoyed
the process of research, especially when it came to geography. Could you speak to
your interest in this subject, and how that both inspires and fuels your writing?
TKR: I grew up in rural Idaho and didn’t leave the Pacific Northwest until I was a
teenager, but my family is full of teachers and librarians, so they read me books from
the day I was born and hooked me on learning about places I’d never been. My love of
science fiction and fantasy came from this—but also that love of geography. I collected
maps as a kid and was pretty obsessed with all the places I could go someday, and
figured out that writing was another way to learn about them. I remember setting a story
I wrote in sixth grade in North Dakota, just because it wasn’t Idaho (but I figured it
wasn’t too far off).
I loved exploring (literally and figuratively) new cities and countries and landscapes in
my research for Wild and Distant Seas. I spent a huge amount of time with historical
maps and photos, as well as contemporary photos and videos that people have
uploaded to places like Google Maps and YouTube. I mapped out my characters’
movements and studied maps to decide where to send them. To pick the Brazil location,
I sat down with my globe and a map of 19th century shipping routes.
I’ll also give credit here to my younger son, Danny, who was six when I started writing
Wild and Distant Seas and is thirteen now. His own obsession with maps and countries
started while I was writing and editing the final two parts of my novel, and there is
definitely a bit of him in my character Annie. Really, my kids are an enormous motivator
for me in every aspect of my writing—I want to give them the world, and this is one
way to do it.
SD: What are some writing habits/practices/ rituals that you didn’t have before but that
became a part of your life while you were writing Wild and Distant Seas? Or perhaps
what are the writing practices and habits that you have developed now as you are (no
doubt) working towards your next book? On that note, can you also share with us what
your next book will be about?
TKR: Writing Wild and Distant Seas taught me a lot about my limits. People have asked
how I managed to write a novel while I was working full time and my kids were small --
the truth is, I often did it by sacrificing my health. In the past few years I’ve worked on
changing that. One big thing is learning to write using voice-to-text software. I have a
disability that causes joint pain and weakness in my arms and hands, and writing with
my voice, as odd as it feels sometimes, allows me to write more with less pain. I’ve also
discovered that sleeping well is an essential part of my writing process. It often means
that I write less than I’d like to, but I am in a much better headspace when I do.
I’m also working on improving my organization, which I think every writer is. One thing I
learned during Wild and Distant Seas was how to build a spreadsheet that calculates
characters’ ages at different times. For the book I’m working on now, I have an even
more elaborate timeline spreadsheet, and I’m much stricter with how I organize my
notes. I write linearly—I don’t skip ahead and write future scenes—but I have one
document where I can leave notes for for the future.
So far, being more organized seems to be helping me have a better sense of plot with
this new project, which is good because plot is not my strength. What I’ll tell you about
this one so far is that it involves North Idaho, country music, and aliens—or at least
people who very sincerely believe in them. It has some thematic overlap with Wild and
Distant Seas, in that it centers the concerns of women and parents/grandparents and explores
questions about identity and family, but the tone and structure are really different. I think
it’s funnier, too!
Born in Calcutta and raised in New Delhi, Sayantani Dasgupta is the
author of the essay collection Brown Women Have Everything. Her essays
have been named as “Notable” by Best American Essays 2022 and 2023. Previous
books include the short story collection Women Who Misbehave, the chapbook The
House of Nails: Memories of a New Delhi Childhood, and Fire Girl: Essays on India,
America, & the In-Between, a Finalist for the Foreword Indies Awards for Creative
Nonfiction. She is a contributing editor for Assay: A Journal of Creative
Nonfiction and the founder of Write Wilmington, an online writing initiative that’s free and
open to writers of all levels and skills all around the world. An Associate Professor of
Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington, Sayantani has also taught writing in India, Italy,
Colombia, and Mexico.
author of the essay collection Brown Women Have Everything. Her essays
have been named as “Notable” by Best American Essays 2022 and 2023. Previous
books include the short story collection Women Who Misbehave, the chapbook The
House of Nails: Memories of a New Delhi Childhood, and Fire Girl: Essays on India,
America, & the In-Between, a Finalist for the Foreword Indies Awards for Creative
Nonfiction. She is a contributing editor for Assay: A Journal of Creative
Nonfiction and the founder of Write Wilmington, an online writing initiative that’s free and
open to writers of all levels and skills all around the world. An Associate Professor of
Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington, Sayantani has also taught writing in India, Italy,
Colombia, and Mexico.