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THE RATHBONES

Janice Clark

A gothic, literary adventure set in New England, Janice Clark's haunting debut chronicles one hundred years of a once prosperous and now crumbling whaling family, told by its last surviving member.
Mercy Rathbone, fifteen years old, is the diminutive scion of the Rathbone clan. Her father, the last in the beleaguered dynasty, has been lost at sea for seven years - ever since the last whale was seen off the coast of Naiwayonk, Connecticut. Mercy's memories of her father grow dimmer each day, and she spends most of her time in the attic hideaway of her reclusive uncle Mordecai, who teaches her the secrets of Greek history and nautical navigation through his collection of specimens and moldering books. But when a strange, violent visitor turns up one night, Mercy and Mordecai are forced to flee the crumbling mansion and set sail on a journey that will bring them deep into the haunted history of the Rathbone family, and the reasons for its undoing. As Mercy and Mordecai sail from island to island off the Connecticut coast, encountering dangers and mysteries, friends and foes, they untangle the knots of the Rathbone story, discovering secrets long encased in memory. They learn the history of the family’s founder and patriarch, Moses Rathbone, and the legendary empire he built of ships staffed with the sons of his many, many wives. Sons who stumbled in their father’s shadow, distracted by the arrival of the Stark sisters, a trio of “golden” girls, whose mesmerizing beauty may have sparked the Rathbone’s decline. From the depths of the sea to the lonely heights of the widow’s walk; from the wisdom of the worn Rathbone wives to the mysterious origins of a sinking island, Mercy and Mordecai’s journey will bring them to places they never thought possible. But will they piece together a possible future from the mistakes of the past, or is the once great family’s fate doomed to match that of the whales themselves? Inspired by The Odyssey by way of Edgar Allan Poe and Moby Dick, The Rathbones is an ambitious, mythic, and courageous tour de force that marks the debut of a dazzling new literary voice.

Janice Clark is a writer and designer living in Chicago, where she is a principal at the design firm, Good Studio. She grew up in Mystic, Connecticut (land of whaling and pizza) and has lived in Montreal, Kansas City, San Francisco, and New York, where she earned an MFA in writing at NYU. Her short fiction has appeared in Pindeldyboz, The Nebraska Review, and Hotel St. George, and her design work is represented in the Museum of Modern Art. The Rathbones is her first novel.
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Book

Published 2013-09-01 by Doubleday

Book

Published 2013-09-01 by Doubleday

Comments

If the Faulkner’s Snopes family had gone to sea, they might have become the Rathbones: generations of men whose impossible goal was to tame the ocean and slay its leviathans -- but whose story, in the end, could only be told by a woman. Janice Clark has fit the whole world into this beautiful and capacious book, proving that it's not only life that came from the sea, but language and love as well.

Part odyssey, part ancestral mystery and part sea shanty, all brilliantly entwined and soaked in Greek myth. Mercy's journey over sea and shore and through extraordinary family history is a remarkable tale, both epic and intimate. THE RATHBONES itself feels as though it was loom-woven or carved in whalebone. Beautifully crafted and elegantly told. A siren song of a story.

Dark and beautifully written, Janice Clark’s journey into family history captures the salty bonds of blood and sea, with all that lies beneath: from long held secrets to a broken covenant with the whale. As cautionary a tale as Melville’s, this is nevertheless a woman’s odyssey, one that creates a kind of longing that lingers far beyond its final pages. I’m telling everyone I know to read this one.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7q0w1jrcys99y6k/The%20Rathbones%20Trailer.mov Read more...

A teenager comes of age and grapples with the heavy burdens of family secrets against the backdrop of the 19th-century New England whaling industry in this beautifully written, playful, and intricate debut novel.

The Rathbones is a gorgeous, gothic tale of a seafaring family and their dark secrets, passed through generations. Reminiscent of Melville, Janice Clark’s writing is inventive and astonishing in its sensuousness and attention to historic details.

Full of longing and desire, The Rathbones is a wonder. Janice Clark has written a new chapter of American myth and family legend, an epic tale of adventure of men who go off to sea and the women who wait for them until they can wait no longer. Mercy Rathbone, the 15-year-old girl whose odyssey is at the story's core, is a brilliant creation, who will haunt your memory long after you turn the final page.