Marriage to the Sea explores the joys and dangers of family intimacy and impulsive relationships—both straight and queer—as three women from a half-Jewish, Californian family of artists and activists navigate the eco-crisis, political turmoil, and the afterlife.

When Katya, a rebellious bi+ food activist, sees her father’s ghost one night, she decides he’s calling her to help save the world. She and her youngest sister Arielle, a former meth addict and Shakespearean actress past her ingenue sell-by date, fly to Paris on a quest to help his environmentalist heroine. Along the way, they—and their Aunt Julia, a TV villainess returned to experimental theater—each fall into reckless new loves, one in Paris, one in Venice, and one on a dream journey to help the lost ghost find his way in the afterlife. At every turn, the characters need to find their way in a world in which the sea is rising and new social movements are forming.

“At once Dantesque, Orwellian and Shakespearean, Sarah Stone’s Marriage to the Sea is a kaleidoscopic shifting between the psychic spaces of dream, myth, art, earthly pleasures, fates and families, passions and terrors. In this sensuous, philosophic book, Stone places artists and activists on the edge of apocalypse and posits humanity’s relatively short ascendence as a devised theatrical performance with each of us an actor, responsible, consciously or not, for earth’s fate, our fate. A seer’s handbook for survival and an impassioned ars poetica, Sarah Stone’s Marriage to the Sea is a bold, prophetic masterpiece.”

—Melissa Pritchard, author of Flight of the Wild Swan and A Solemn Pleasure

“Marriage to the Sea, set in Santa Cruz, Paris, and Venice, as well as in the world of dreams and the liminal border between life and death, weaves a sumptuous literary tapestry. The search for lasting love in a precarious world forms the heart of intertwining narratives, with engaging, complex characters: actors and artists, environmental activists, kitchen helpers, and recovering addicts. As it unfolds, Marriage to the Sea grows ever more fascinating and more beautifully rich in language and insight. A dazzling saga of art and political activism, loyalty and betrayal, family, idealism, and the quest for healing.”

—Lillian Howan, author of The Charm Buyers

“I am blown away by this gorgeous fiction, so filled with dreams and quests, mirroring, art, and love. This immersive world urges us to contemplate how a human being can live with terrible loss, of a parent, a sibling, a city, a world. I love this band of beautifully imagined characters, who wrestle with sorrow and discover an abundance of paths forward. A radiant, inspiring book, rich in startling humor and profound wisdom.”

—Harriet Scott Chessman, author of Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper and The Lost Sketchbook of Edgar Degas

In the corner of the loft, beside a tangle of Arielle’s workout clothes, a shape flickered. A trick of the streetlights? A power surge? A figure made of light: bluish, patchy, four pinpoints of light above his head. Katya shook her head, closed her eyes, opened them. He disappeared, then reappeared, in and out of the world. His solid body now transparent, bent over, as if he couldn’t yet stand up straight. He stared through her, maybe blinded by the sharp lights above his bearded face. Her longing for him came over her like a blow to the heart: She wanted to crawl straight to him but froze, as cold now as she’d been overheated earlier. He was so thin. Maybe he needed different food but didn’t know how to find it yet? He wasn’t here. He wasn’t anywhere.

She heard his voice, forlorn, a lost child. When are you coming?

“Daddy?” Quiet, not to wake Arielle. Who would or would not see this blue flickering being.

The voice—so like him—asked again, When are you coming?

She whispered, “What do you want? What can I do?” No answer. “Have you seen Mom? Is she there with you?”

When are you coming? Raucous and plaintive at once, a seagull far from the ocean, sending a call she had no goddamn clue how to answer.

The streetlight outside blinked out; the bluish light vibrated intensely. The room went dark. When the light came back on, he was gone.