An excerpt from Forest Avenue Press publisher and author Laura Stanfill’s August 30, 2026 substack:
[…] The Sea-Glass Shore by Julie Salmon Kelleher[,] Forest Avenue’s Sept. 1 release[,] is a selkie story that is not about entrapment and escape like the original seal-person myth. It’s a novel about what it takes to stay—in a marriage, in a family, in a community, in an environment—and the cost of that commitment. We’re calling it a midlife selkie story and it’s set in a fictional version of Bellingham, Washington. Rona, the selkie, agrees to live on land with the archivist, Jack, who falls for her—because in Julie’s version, Jack opts out of the myth. He knows better. He swears he won’t steal Rona’s pelt. He wants her to stay for love, for him and their twins, not because she’s trapped. It’s also the rare fantastical novel that has parenting at its core.
Laura Stanfill (L) and book designer Gigi Little (R) with “The Sea-Glass Shore” at Browsers Bookshop in Olympia, WA
I’ve read synopses of other literary selkie retellings and they all stick to the bones of the myth: the selkie, often female, gets trapped by a male human on land until she finds her stolen pelt and returns to the sea. But what about a real love story? Where there is love on both sides? And what about the middle of their lives? The middle is full of surprises—in real life and in Julie’s debut novel. Which is available starting Tuesday at your local independent bookstore or online at bookshop.org.
I remember finding this manuscript in our digital submissions folder and saying to myself, Oh. Oh! It’s gorgeous in terms of the writing and the clarity of the landscape. It’s otherworldly but deeply human. It never stagnates or settles, the way a big idea can sometimes fall flat a handful of chapters in. It’s accessible; Julie takes good care of the reader in describing how their pelts work and the call of the sea. And it’s surprising. Nothing about The Sea-Glass Shore is predictable.
It’s the kind of book nobody but its author could have possibly written.
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You can follow the author Julie Salmon Kelleher on Instagram at julieskelleher and Bluesky at julieskelleher.
The launch is at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 1 at Village Books in Fairhaven.
The author will be in Seattle at Third Place Books Ravenna at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 10.
And for Portland readers, at 7 p.m., on Monday, Oct. 5, Kelleher be in conversation with Michelle Ruiz Keil at Annie Bloom’s Books.
