Seeker: A Sea Odyssey

by Rita Pomade

Overview

Seeker: A Sea Odyssey is the story of two people who meet in Mexico and fall in love. Rita is an American part-time English language teacher and freelance reporter for an English language tourist magazine struggling to raise two young boys on her own. Bernard is a French geologist under contract to the Mexican government to search for underground thermal springs. She dreams of finding Shangri-la after witnessing a bloody government crackdown from which she barely escapes. He dreams of having a yacht and sailing the world. Their dreams mesh, and they immigrate to Canada to earn the money to build their boat.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771833516
Publisher:	Guernica Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/01/2019
Series:	MiroLand , #19
Edition description:	First edition
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Rita Pomade, an intrepid nomad originally from New York, now lives and writes in Montreal. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and poetry reviews, and her monologues for auditioning actors was selected for inclusion in the Monologue Bank. An excerpt from her forthcoming memoir Seeker: A Sea Odyssey was included in two travel anthologies.

Read an Excerpt

Hour after hour we tossed about in a savage ocean, the Santa Rita no more consequential than a speck of lint in a vast washing machine. There was no horizon. There was no sign of anything sentient. There was nothing out there but wave after wave of black, rolling water with its deafening roar, accompanied by loud cracks of thunder and sheet lightening coming from all directions. We dared not think about how long our thin-skinned hull could hold its own against the fury of the wind and the pounding of the waves.And then it all stopped. The rain tapered off. The wind died away. The ocean flattened. Bernard tumbled into the cabin. He collapsed on the floor next to Stefan and fell into a deep sleep. Almost two days had passed since this nightmare began, and then it abated as abruptly as it came. We were alive. We had not only survived the storm from hell, but we were nearing Indonesia where we would no longer have to face the threat from India's southwest monsoons. When Bernard awoke, I brought him a coffee and sat on the floor beside him. I loved this man so much. I stroked his back, his arm, his hair. Bernard never responded to words, never trusted them. But he understood touch. He put his free arm around me and held me against his still damp slicker. We drank in the warmth of each other's bodies until he was ready to get out of his wet clothes and re-chart our course.I went on deck and surveyed the ocean with awe and a newfound respect. I wondered at the tempest we had endured. It seemed as though the entire ocean was out of control. But it wasn't. Only the surface was in turmoil. The ocean by its very depth could not have moved. I felt the presence of a vast stillness that lay beneath the surface. There is a constant in the universe, I thought. Only the playbill changes. The stage set remains. Underneath there is something subtle and profound and eternal.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Phone Call 1

1 Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made Of 3

2 Going For Gold 8

3 West Meets East 13

4 Getting Our Feet Wet 20

5 The Die Is Cast 26

6 Our New Reality 31

7 Perils Of The Formosa Strait 39

8 Hong Kong: An Island Like No Other 50

9 Settling In 57

10 Macao And Back 67

11 Anchors Aweigh 72

12 Bribes And Arms 77

13 In Nature's Own Cathedral 91

14 From Borneo To Singapore 101

15 Hindu Miracles, Buddhist Snakes And A Broken Mast 113

16 Pit Stops In Sabang And Phuket 123

17 En Route To Sri Lanka 131

18 Visitors From Hell 161

19 Terror On The High Seas 177

20 Singapore Redux 183

21 From Dolphins To Dhal 202

22 Storms Brewing On The Horizon 213

23 Under The Gun In Egypt 218

24 Unholy In The Holy Land 232

25 The Plan Is Not To Get Anywhere 242

26 Crossing The Great East/West Divide 251

27 Westward Ho! 263

28 Sensual Pleasures 273

29 Resetting My Compass 280

30 Setting A New Course 287

31 Homeward Bound 296

Epilogue: Coming Full Circle 303

Acknowledgements 307

About The Author 309