Sea Smoke

Sea Smoke is a mystical love story and mystery. Though a work of fiction, it is historically based and takes place, in part, during the 1730s during the New England Woodland Rebellion, a forerunner to the American Revolution. Lanyon Penberthy’s beloved wife, Kayna, dies during an influenza epidemic in Porthusek, Cornwall. His intense love for her both sustains and tortures him. Distraught, and clinging to her promise of eternal love, he sets forth from Penzans, England, en route to North America, captaining a merchant ship named Mordonn, Gaelic for Sea Waves. It is a difficult crossing with many weather delays. North of Bermuda and south of Boston, their destination, a late season hurricane steers them off course, pushing them into the Gulf of Maine. They become shipwrecked on a remote island off the coast of Maine. Penberthy is alive but badly injured and uncertain of his fate. He is rescued, and his wounds tended, by a mysterious woman who lives on the island. Like the sea smoke that surrounds the island, visually distorting it, the barriers between past and present, dreams and illusions, become faded as he drifts in and out of consciousness.