THE STORY OF LAND AND SEA is beautifully written with exquisite prose.?

The main character is Helen whose story is told before and after her death along with the tale of her husband, her father, her daughter, and Moll, a slave from the plantation and Helen's friend.

You will follow the characters through their lives on a plantation, on a ship, and in a regular household. The characters are an odd sort but ones with depth and with feelings that ooze through the pages simply because of Ms. Smith’s elegant writing style.

THE STORY OF LAND AND SEA takes the reader through complex situations with the reader being put directly into the story and being carried along with the characters and feeling every emotion especially their pain of loss.

I was a bit confused at first, but Ms. Smith writes so beautifully and so poignantly that you can't help but want to continue. THE STORY OF LAND AND SEA is a book unlike any other I have read simply because of the storyline and the time in history.?

?The confusion came about because of the time frame and order of dates. The book moves back and forth from past to present day in Helen and John's life but seemed to be out of order.

Despite the confusion, the book definitely will keep your interest and will keep you reading. Ms. Smith has written a thoughtful book in a time period that I wasn't familiar with and therefore made THE STORY OF LAND AND SEA even more intriguing and interesting.

I would recommend this book solely on the premise of the marvelous writing style Ms. Smith has and the background she gave as to why she wrote the book. The beauty of the reason Ms. Smith wrote the book makes THE STORY OF LAND AND SEA a stunning debut. 4/5 (See her video below)

This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest review.?

The book is an easy read, although the timeline and tale move back and forth when one or another character is highlighted and it sometimes caused confusion, but as the story continued, it soon became clearer. The important characters are Asa, Helen, John, Tabitha and Moll.
Asa seemed to be a bitter, unhappy man, suffering from the loss of his wife in childbirth, a wife whose value he didn’t realize until she was gone. Although, his wife was devout, he was not, until his daughter, Helen, was rescued after she was captured by the British. As a rule, he was very disciplined and rigid, but he adored Helen and doted on her, allowing her more privileges than most women of her day because there were no women in her life to really teach her, her proper place in the world. He considered himself to be a just slave holder who provided well for them. I thought Asa had a fatal flaw; he only realized the error of his ways after he made the errors, but he never learned from them.
Helen was a devoted daughter who looked after her father’s affairs and did not express a desire to marry, rejecting all suitors until John appeared on the scene. She had been completely devoted to the farm and her father, and her father had come to accept her wishes not to marry, and he actually believed this would be the best course of action for them. They would live together, and she would handle all of his needs while he traveled and did work for the government during the days of the Revolutionary War.
John is a man with no status, no fortune or family to speak of, but he adores Helen from the first moment he spies her. He keeps his feelings silent because he is rooming in a friend’s home and his friend is courting her according to the wishes of Helen’s father and her unwanted beau’s mother. John, a soldier, was previously a pirate. He was not exactly equal in station to Helen and had no way to truly provide for her. Still, love blossomed, and although Asa disapproved of the man who rescued his daughter, they found their own way to happiness.
Tabitha is a fun loving, happy child doomed to be motherless. Helen’s mother had died in childbirth, and her fate was the same. Tabitha became the shining light of her father’s eye, as Helen had been the raison d’etre for Asa. Tabitha contracted Yellow Fever and died at the age of 10. Asa, the grandfather and John, the father both suffered the same terrible losses, both eventually lost wife and child.
Moll was a slave given to Helen for Helen’s tenth birthday. Moll was eleven and not quite aware of her place as a slave, yet always aware that she was owned and not free. She wanted her freedom and that wish remained with her. Her relationship with the family, Helen, Asa and even John, was one that was not clearly defined as slave and master since there were times she was treated warmly and kindly, but in the end, they did with her as they pleased, never truly considering her feelings, only considering their own, thinking of her as a lesser being, never realizing that she hurt as they hurt. When she was forced to marry and had her own children, they never worried about separating her from her loved ones, although they never stopped mourning for those they lost. The relationships between John and Helen, Asa and his wife, and Moll and Moses had distinctive beginnings, and each was different in its nature. The degree of love and affection varied as did the loyalty. All three couples had children and were devoted to them, though in Moll’s case, not to all equally.
We are introduced to John and Tabitha, in 1793, in a town on the coast of North Carolina, a storm is raging, and a young child, Tabitha, is listening to a tale her father is telling her about her mother, a woman she never met. Her parents had run away together, against Helen’s father’s wishes and spent a year at sea. Asa did not want his daughter, Helen, to marry a man, John, beneath her status, a man with no family or fortune to speak of, or perhaps Asa did not want her to marry at all, so they eloped, but this is not the story John tells his daughter, instead he weaves truth and fantasy into other tales to entertain her.
John has a store in which he sold sundries like eggs, candy, yarn, ribbons and flour. During the day, Tabitha had great freedom, as Helen did as a child. She wandered the shoreline and collected mementos of land and sea, as her mother before her did. There are many parallel stories in this tale. Helen and Tabitha both lost their mothers in childbirth. Moll, John and Asa all lose a child in one way or another. Each perceives freedom differently, but each desires it. Although John and Asa are suffering from their own sorrows, they do not understand that Moll suffers as well. The sea figures in all of their lives. John believed nothing bad could happen on the sea, Asa believed it relaxed him in his old age, although previously he thought the land was a far better place to be, and Moll believed it was her ticket to freedom. John sees Helen in Tabitha as Asa sees both his wife and his daughter in her.
The dichotomy between the lives of the two children, Moll and Helen, is apparent to the reader, but not to Helen. She accepts that Moll should have less freedom and feels little guilt when she forces her to do things that are abhorrent to Moll. She believes it is simply the way it is and addresses Moll as if she can do the same things as Helen, even though her own behavior often prevents Moll from being as free. Their friendship is unusual, but not fully formed.
At the end, I thought the sea brought Helen and John together, even as it separated her from Asa, and I wondered if its course, perhaps, would provide a path for Moll to freedom, since she was separated from her best loved son Davey, but then I wondered if it would also be the watery grave for Asa, who was a sad, lonely old man at the end of his life, separated from all those he loved.