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Listen to an excerpt of Safe from the Sea. The author of the book, Peter Geye, reads chapter one…
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Winner of the 2010 Indie Lit Award for Fiction

Winner of the 2010 Northeast Minnesota Book Award for Fiction

“My heart won’t be the same again.” - WriteMeg.com

“This deeply moving, powerfully realized debut novel, an estranged father and son find reconciliation in the final week of the father’s life…Geye tackles the subjects of death, dying, and living with admirable insight and courage…Geye engages the complexities of family dynamics skillfully and handles especially well the kind of family grudges and misunderstandings that can cripple relationships for decades, as they do here. Inspiring, wise, and enthusiastically recommended for all readers.”—Library Journal

“Geye is a skilled and subtle observer. Throughout the book, readers are given an affectionate and perceptive view of roughhewn northern Minnesota, not only its Walden-esque lakes and forests, but also its thrifty and honest people…Geye is a gifted storyteller…Geye might wince to read this, but he could be a first-rate adventure novelist. He also excels in creating characters who are ordinary and exceptional at the same time—high praise for any author. The characters in Safe from the Sea are maturely-crafted; there are no heroes or villains in the book, just good people working through tough issues with grace and good humor.”— The New York Journal of Books

Safe from the Sea is small in scope but substantial, on all levels, in its impact. It is a thing of beauty; a lesson in the ineffable power of story to take us out of ourselves and bring us to a place we never knew but recognize all the same. - Bookslut.com

“A finely crafted first novel…Give this book to readers of David Guterson and Robert Olmstead, who will be captured by the themes of approaching death and the pain and solace provided by nature.”— Booklist

“[A] lyric story of familial strife and reconciliation…Geye excels at capturing the importance of life’s seemingly small moments and at cataloging their beauty…Geye shows how relationships—however flawed the participants—can be salvaged and strengthened when people strive to make things work through understanding and the search for and sharing of the truth.”—ForeWord Magazine

“A man and his estranged elderly father. A tragic Lake Superior shipwreck thirty-five years in their past that crushed their - and the rest of the immediate family’s - relationships with each other. The stunningly beautiful northern Minnesota landscape. These factors come together to create one of the best first novels I’ve ever read.” Carl Hoffman Boswell Book Co.— Carl Hoffman, Boswell Book Co.

“Safe From the Sea is an honest story, of a hardened sailor and his son in their remote Minnesota cabin, together yet run aground from the apparent wind of lost years. ...the two work to fill in the missing space, the stories left unsaid, against the sway of shipwrecks and heartaches…sensational.”—Michael Karpus, Books & Books Bal Harbour Shops

“What a pleasant surprise this book was! A lovely story of good people, the bad things that push them apart and ultimately, of their own goodness bringing them back together in time to appreciate the impact they have on each other’s lives.”—Chris Rickert, Joseph-Beth Booksellers

“This is a beautifully atmospheric book that has both seafaring adventure and a tender father-son story of regret and forgiveness. A young man and his aging father have a troubled and distant relationship, but when the son answers his father’s summons to the family’s cabin in the north woods, they find they have a deep longing for a better connection. As cold winds and snow sweep around the cabin, the father finally tells his son the true story of the shipwreck that has haunted their family for decades, and their hearts begin to thaw. This is a deeply emotional story about the family legacies that flow from one generation to another, shipwrecks or not, and if you’re like me, it will make you think long and hard about your own.”—Margie White, Just the Bookstore

There is something magical about tales of Great Lakes ship wrecks. In Safe from the Sea, debut novelist Peter Geye has crafted one of the best descriptions of such a shipping disaster on Lake Superior that I’ve ever read… But this book is so much more than an exciting adventure story. Estranged from his father for much of his adult life, Noah is called to his Minnesota hometown, the shipping village of Misquah, by his dying father. What follows is nothing less than a true love story, revealed in chapters built around the shipping disaster tale…This gem is highly recommended for romantics and adventurists, men and women alike.”—Nancy Simpson, Book Vault

“Peter Geye has caught the essence of Minnesota’s exotic and remote North Shore of Lake Superior juxtaposed with a story of the poignant struggle between adult children and elderly parents. Lake Superior is the graveyard of hundreds of shipwrecks and Peter has allowed us to imagine one from a survivor’s point of view. In this setting a son and daughter take the time to be with their father in his last days- truth, understanding and respect emerge. We will enjoy handselling this novel in fall as we experience the Gales of November.”—Anita Zager, Northern Lights Bookstore

“Safe From the Sea is Peter Geye’s fine debut, a deep hearted novel of bitten lives lived out on the cold shore of a ferocious world. In the silence of their existence, the dignity of their bearing, Geye compassionately renders the magnitudes of their despair, endurance and greatness.”—Robert Olmstead

“Safe from the Sea is at once a Great Lakes adventure, an ode to a vanished life, and a gorgeous examination of the healing of deep wounds between father and son. This is a tautly written gem. I urge you to discover this journey for yourself.”

Joseph Boyden

“This is another fantastic novel published by Unbridled Books…. I can’t possibly do this novel justice with a review, so let me just say how highly I recommend this book. My rating 5/5 - Book Magic

“A rich, satisfying novel about family members who make amends after a lifetime of estrangement.”—The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Geye writes with exquisite tenderness of the end of one life and the flowering of another, one generation’s gift to the next.”—Curled Up with a Good Book

“Safe From the Sea grabbed me from the start and will stick with me. It is a finely crafted character driven saga. Sure there have been stories done about father and son relationships before, but not like this. Peter Geye captures the relationship as well as the beautiful Lake Superior landscape with pitch perfect ease. In my opinion, it is a must read!”—So Many Precious Books, So Little Time

“What a fine debut! A father-son rapprochement story that had me wishing my own father was still around so I could share this with him. I know he would have enjoyed it as much as I did.” — Peter Mock, McIntyre’s

“A reader can just about feel the cold spray of Lake Superior and taste the softness of the lefse…. The best sections of “Safe From the Sea” are the stories Olaf tells, and the questions Noah asks, especially about the tragedy of the Ragnarøk. What we expect from a man vs. nature story is not that man will win, but that man will be wise and valiant, and give it everything he has. Olaf’s account of the wreck lives up to the great tradition of adventure storytelling. His pain about the shipwreck is not only survivor’s angst, but also specific guilt about a lost shipmate that he has never shared before…. Olaf’s last wish presents Noah with a watery physical challenge of his own, and gives the back end of the novel a touch of fairy tale, a la late John Cheever.”—The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“The primeval beauty of the Great Lakes and the brutal power of its storms provide the backdrop for this superb examination of life’s natural cycle. As Noah Torr confronts both his dying father and he and his wife’s problems with conception, an old shipwreck and the effect it had on the Torr family supply the framework for the participants to appreciate life and death in the normal flow of human existence.”—Bill Cusumano, Nicola’s Books

“We sometimes love our silent fathers through the hard work they do. Peter Geye has written a novel suffused with a son’s love and darkened by the rough storms of a sailing father’s affection and absence. Safe from the Sea is a beautiful book—all shipwreck and rescue.” — Alyson Hagy

“I don’t know of another novel that better captures that stormy North Atlantic up in Minnesota called Lake Superior than Peter Geye’s compelling debut novel, Safe from the Sea. He captures the wildness and the cold and braids those figurative aspects into a tenderly told story of a son and a father who has been anything but tender. The artful merging of a story of relationships with a riveting sea tale has been the formula for many memorable books, and Peter Geye has made it fresh here and kept it memorable.” – Stuart Dybek

“I was thrilled to discover the work of Peter Geye. Besides being a page-turning delight, his book is beautifully written, and the relationship between Noah and Olaf is one of the greatest father and son stories I’ve ever come across. This is a stunning novel, and Peter Geye is a special writer, whose voice is like no one else’s. I hope we hear from him again, and soon.”—Steve Yarbrough

“Peter Geye has rendered the Minnesota north shore in all its stark, dangerous beauty, and it is the perfect backdrop for this deeply moving story of conflict and forgiveness. Safe from the Sea is a remarkable debut.” — Ron Rash

PETER GEYE

SAFE FROM THE SEA

* Bestseller *

Set against the powerful lakeshore landscape of northern Minnesota, Safe from the Sea is a heartfelt novel in which a son returns home to reconnect with his estranged and dying father thirty-five years after the tragic wreck of a Great Lakes ore boat that the father only partially survived and that has divided them emotionally ever since. When his father for the first time finally tells the story of the horrific disaster he has carried with him so long, it leads the two men to reconsider each other.

Meanwhile, Noah’s own struggle to make a life with an absent father has found its real reward in his relationship with his sagacious wife, Natalie, whose complications with infertility issues have marked her husband’s life in ways he only fully realizes as the reconciliation with his father takes shape.

Peter Geye has delivered an archetypal story of a father and son, of the tug and pull of family bonds, of Norwegian immigrant culture, of dramatic shipwrecks and the business and adventure of Great Lakes shipping in a setting that simply casts a spell over the characters as well as the reader.

$24.95 / $28.95 CAN | Fiction Hardcover | 6x9 | 256 pages

October 2010

ISBN: 978-1-60953-008-2 | Carton Quantity: 24

EISBN: 978-1-60953-009-9

A ribbon of beguiling fog curled up the trail from the lake, and he followed it down. Pockets of complete darkness still haunted the woods on either side of the path, heavy, wet, and eerie in a polka-dotted dawn. He could see the lightness above the lake and the still-black water exhaling mist. He thought again of Natalie’s arriving today.

When he came to the beach he walked to the edge of the water and kicked at a clump of limp grass. He wore only a sweatshirt and his boxers, and the cold air gripped his legs. He flexed his body to stave off the chill. All around the rim of the lake the woods hoarded a darkness that didn’t seem to make sense—coming, as he had, down the faintly lit path—but when he turned around to look back at the house, it too was gone in the darkness.

Across the lake, above the rolling treetops, the sky was turning a muted red that faded upward, seamlessly, through a hundred shades of pink and back to black. He stepped onto the dock, the planks and pilings creaking under his weight. The boat sat in the water, tied to the dock by two expert knots that appeared ready to hold the old thing there forever. Noah tiptoed into the boat and sat on the splintered thwart, watching the ripples roll out on the otherwise placid lake. Natalie will love this place, he thought. He could picture her on a warm summer afternoon, sitting on the beach with a magazine and sun hat under the shade of an umbrella. She’ll be on her way soon. In that instant he realized—almost as if he’d always been aware of this fact—that his father’s story mattered only if Noah could someday tell it himself, to a son or daughter, to another Torr who could keep it alive—here, on a blustery November night—for a third generation.

Peter Geye received his MFA from the University of New Orleans and his PhD from Western Michigan University, where he was editor of Third Coast. He was born and raised in Minneapolis and continues to live there with his wife and three children. He is the author of the award winning novel, Safe from the Sea.

Author photo by Matt and Jenae Batt.

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