Hey there! Today, I have another Loving the Lines for you! Basically, Loving the Lines is dedicated to books with stand-out quotes that need to be shared. I’m often moved by passages and lines from the books I read, and I thought this would be a great way to show the love!! Many thanks to all the wonderful writers who inspire, empower, entertain, and make people think. Today, that author and book is:
Out Front the Following Sea by Leah Angstman
This is such a powerful and poignant read, and the type of story that stays with you long after you finish it. I first saw the book during the cover reveal and knew I had to read it. Let’s check it out!
About the Book:
Title: Out Front the Following Sea
Author: Leah Angstman
Page Length: 334
Publication Date: Jan. 11, 2022
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Genre: Historical / Literary / Epic
*Shortlisted for the Chaucer Book Award*
Synopsis: Out Front the Following Sea is a historical epic of one woman’s survival in a time when the wilderness is still wild, heresy is publicly punishable, and being independent is worse than scorned — it is a death sentence. At the onset of King William’s War between French and English settlers in 1689 New England, Ruth Miner is accused of witchcraft for the murder of her parents and must flee the brutality of her town. She stows away on the ship of the only other person who knows her innocence: an audacious sailor — Owen — bound to her by years of attraction, friendship, and shared secrets. But when Owen’s French ancestry finds him at odds with a violent English commander, the turmoil becomes life-or-death for the sailor, the headstrong Ruth, and the cast of Quakers, Pequot Indians, soldiers, highwaymen, and townsfolk dragged into the fray. Now Ruth must choose between sending Owen to the gallows or keeping her own neck from the noose.
Steeped in historical events and culminating in a little-known war on pre-American soil, Out Front the Following Sea is a story of early feminism, misogyny, arbitrary rulings, and the treatment of outcasts, with parallels still mirrored and echoed in today’s society.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | My Review
Favorite Lines:
He thought of her in Stonington, how the men, ignorant of her past, would line up for her hand. He thought of standing at the back, the wave of them, and disappearing against the sea, forgotten by all but her pain. When she hurt, she’d remember him; that he knew. That’s the legacy he’d leave hanging on her when he set her free.
He was a restless spirit. She imagined that was what she’d always admired in him. And how she wanted that wanderlust for herself, so captive to all that had tied her in place.
A warmth stile through her, and she thought of home. What that meant – what it meant now. His scent was home, and there was now no other.
Of all the things to know, I know nothing at all …we are shackled to this dictation, this ‘men’s talk,’ when there’s other worlds out there … Other worlds that do not know our shackles, so we must, in actuality, be so small within them … the frailty of thought against the obstinance of time. I wish … I wish I could hold it. But it goes before I can reach it.
Who was Ruth? What defined this being? A new identity swept through her bones with rigor, and she felt them calcify, as if her whole self – whatever it was – had turned bone-thick and could push back against the shrinking walls.
You must never give up hope that the day will come when your freedom becomes important again.
“When the colors are gone, ye’re left wishing for more paints, settling for muddied water.” But Ruth witnessed a spark flash in the corner of Martha’s eyes that showed colors reclaimed and told Ruth that freedom was, indeed, something far more desirable than ever before imagined.
Don’t believe all that you think. You’ll not find truth in beliefs.
Ruth lamented that she’d snuffed out one more light. But it was her penance to lose it, to watch it all gutter as punishment from the haste from which she could never seem to learn, never seem to untangle from her nature.
There is a perfect dawn after every storm.
Sometimes your fate is worse than death: you have to live with it.
What is a woman’s purpose, son, but to encourage the wicked ways of another woman against all of the man’s laws and conventions?
Sometimes Ruth felt that if she could explain the sun, the moon, the stars, the tides, the very order of the universe, she’d figure out how those events and consequences all intertwined to create their own order in turn, and that somehow, there was a place, a reason, and an explanation for all of it, and in her own understanding of this, she’d find her own order in the universe, an answer to whys and hows of the past, where they crossed with the hows of the future.
If there are other worlds out there, I wonder if they have a spring. I wonder if somewhere there is endless winter and somewhere an endless spring, and how do we cross over? How does one understand spring when he’s known only winter?
Have you read Out Front the Following Sea? Which lines are your favorites? Comment below!
Wow, this sounds like a beautifully written book, Julie.
It is, Carla. A very powerful read!