Introducing Sharon J. Wishnow

The Pelican Tide Comes to Shore June 11, 2024 from Lake Union Publishing

Introducing Debutante Sharon J. Wishnow

If I close my eyes I can remember the squish of wet sand between my toes of the beach where I spent my childhood. On hot summer days, my cousins and I would plop down on sandy towels and eat tuna sandwiches soggy from the cooler. We’d then paw through the icepacks looking for foil wrapped packets of my grandmother’s chocolate chip cookies.

I grew up in Massachusetts. My childhood was lobster rolls, the Red Sox, and building snow forts. I had aunts not ants and yes, I had the accent where I pahked the cah.

When people ask me about my debut novel, The Pelican Tide, and my connection to its setting, Grand Isle, Louisiana, I take a deep breath.

I’m a transplanted New Englander who lives in Northern Virginia. I’ve lived south of the Mason Dixon line longer than I ever lived in Massachusetts. I earned my MFA here. My children were born here. And it is here that I write. I find it curious that I can’t truly call myself a Southerner. However, I believe that no matter where we come from, we share more similarities than differences.

Transplanting - Source Pixaby

I’m a nature lover. My first memories are of the ocean and the beach. The pull of the water and the life teeming along the shores is a fascination I share with people around the world. It’s all the same water – eventually.

My Story Genesis

In 2020 as the world shut in waiting out the pandemic, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts presented a talk about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill – ten years later. Had it really been ten years? I remembered the spill. I had logged into the underwater camera and watched in train wreck suspense as a pipe a mile underwater spewed inky black oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The talk discussed how the environment was still recovering and changing a decade later. But I asked, what happened to the people? What would it have been like to live through an oil spill, let alone the worst oil spill in U.S. history?

Controlled burn oil in the Gulf of Mexico Credit: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service

Writers are famous for asking what if questions at the start of stories. It didn’t take long before my story began to take shape. I knew I wanted to write about a beach, I just hadn’t planned for it to be one covered in crude oil.

The Pelican Tide is about Josie Babineaux, a Cajun chef struggling to keep her family’s fish shack turned destination eatery solvent after her oil-rig worker husband gambles away the family’s savings. It all goes up in oily flames when the Deepwater Horizon explodes, and oil covers her island home.

This is a story of forgiveness, second chances, the environment, and hot sauce. Chef Josie is a chili sauce aficionado and hopes to find her salvation in a contest.

You’ll also meet Gumbo the brown pelican, a mischievous and lovable bird who the Babineaux family rescued as a wounded fledging. He has adopted the family as his people.

Through deep research using scientific journals, government reports, maps, newspaper articles, video footage, books, and even a block buster Hollywood movie, I have fictionalize the 87 days of the spill. The plot and specific events are true to the actual timeline of events and actions taken by real people.

This story has connected me to a new world and new people. I hope it will connect readers too. I want everyone who has ever felt sand between their toes to imagine what it would feel like to have that sand covered in sticky, red-stained crude oil. How angry would you be? What would you do to protect your home and all that you love?

Fear not this story is one of hope with more than a bit of edible sweetness. I invite you to check out Chef Josie’s recipes found at the back of the book and online.

Pre-order The Pelican Tide, paperback, audio, and now at a special $3.99 Kindle price.

Keep it spicy y’all.

Sharon

Connect with me:

• Instagram: sjwishnow

• www.sharonwishnow.comSharon