title: Sea Escape: A Novel
author:  Lynne Griffin 
description: Griffin follows up <i>Life Without Summer</i> with a drearily similar novel that alternates between the present of Laura, a nurse and mother, and the past of Laura's mother, Helen. When Helen suffers a stroke, Laura becomes the care advocate for a mother she has long felt distanced from, a job that affects her children and husband as well. In a bid to understand Helen's clinging to the memory of her dead husband, Laura begins to read their love letters, which contain hints about long-buried family secrets that break the ice between Laura and Helen and allow Laura to deal openly and honestly with her own husband and children. Though most of the right women's fiction boxes are checked, this suffers greatly from characters who don't feel particularly real and plot complications that thud into place without adding tension. <i>(July)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: # Homecoming
  
    1. [](text/ch001.xhtml#section)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Cover](text/cover.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![cover image](../media/epub-to-image.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
  _“Homecoming,” by Susan Palwick, is a dark fantasy about a young girl on the
  cusp of womanhood who yearns to leave her village and go to sea with her best
  friend, a boy about her own age, despite natural and supernatural dangers._
  
  
  _This novelette was acquired and edited for Tor.com by consulting editor[Ellen
  Datlow](https://www.tor.com/tags/edited%20by%20Ellen%20Datlow)._
  
  
  The sea is a crazy whore. That’s what Granny Crimson always said, in the
  village where I was born. Stay on land, she said, stay to shore, farm and grow
  and provide for your families, eh, lads. You’ll get nowt from that strumpet
  Ocean, na, na, she’ll take everything you have, life and riches and beauty,
  and leave you barren and dead, washed up broken on the rocks, a thing for the
  crabs to eat. She’ll do that every time, the sea will. Stay to shore, lads,
  a