How Far Is the Ocean from Here

Jane Ciabattari

Amy Shearn's idiosyncratic narrator and the damaged children she befriends anchor this tantalizing novel about a surrogate mother who has second thoughts just weeks before her due date…Shearn's mesmerizing language and dramatic flair make this first novel a standout.
—The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

As Shearns's accomplished and sophisticated debut opens, "hugely pregnant" Susannah Prue hides out deep in the desolate Texas-New Mexico border area desert, at the ramshackle Thunder Lodge motor inn. There she meets a variety of misfits, including the owners' mentally disabled teenage son and another guest's sexually confused niece, who become an essential if dysfunctional adoptive family to desperate, on-the-lam Susannah. Passive and oft-disappointed, Susannah made a fateful choice in deciding to serve as a surrogate mother to the wealthy but infertile Forsythes, Kit and Julian. The relationships among the three, we eventually learn, spiraled into tragedy, but the birth is imminent. Shearn's narration is fluid, shifting seamlessly among perspectives and time frames. The Forsythes verge on hard-edged rich-person caricature, but the rest of the cast is fully and compassionately realized, making for an affecting portrayal of the lengths people travel for love and companionship. (July)

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Library Journal

Susannah Prue is a surrogate mother on the run and ready to give birth. She has fled Chicago and the Forsythes, the baby's biological parents, in a car that makes it as far as a kitschy Southwestern motel. Her third-trimester panic has been brewing for some time, as she learns more about Kit and Julian Forsythe, wealthy, educated, yet often shallow and emotionally dysfunctional. The Thunder Lodge Motor Inn, inhabited by owners Marlon and Char Garland and their developmentally disabled teenaged son, Tim, is an unlikely oasis for Susannah. Other guests arrive, including Dicey and her hermaphrodite niece, Frankie. These unlikely inhabitants create a sort of impromptu family-complete with bickering and compassion and trips to nearby roadside attractions. With Susannah's due date drawing near and her car still waiting for repairs, she makes a last-ditch attempt to reach the ocean, taking Frankie and Tim with her. Shearn gives us a touching, funny, and lyrically written story with well-drawn characters seeking acceptance and peace. The awkward and unlikely flash-forward at the end reads like an unnecessary after-thought but shouldn't keep readers away from this satisfying first novel. Recommended for larger fiction collections.
—Jenn B. Stidham

Kirkus Reviews

A disoriented surrogate mother goes on the lam in this uneven first novel. Dusk in the West Texas desert; a stranger in trouble arrives at a desolate motel. The hotel owners are a harmless old couple; the stranger is, initially, a threat only to herself. Marlon and Char Garland have their hands full coping with their handsome, severely retarded son, 17-year-old Tim. Susannah Prue's case is more complicated. The young Chicago woman, notably pregnant, her due date approaching, has been on the road for days. When the bookstore clerk agreed to act as a surrogate mother for the middle-aged Kit and Julian Forsythe, it was not just for the generous payments. Always the bit player in others' lives, Susannah grabbed at the chance to be the star, realizing too late she was just "the hired gun." What propelled her out of town were the confusing, inappropriate attentions of flaky Julian, and signs unrelated to her predicament. Now her magical thinking (an overused device) is pulling her toward the ocean, that old metaphor for limitless possibilities; she doesn't give proximity to a hospital a thought. At the motel Susannah is joined by other guests: a woman called Dicey and her seven-year-old niece Frankie, a hermaphrodite being raised, over her protests, as a girl. The drama intensifies when Susannah hits the road again, "borrowing" Dicey's car, and taking Tim and Frankie with her (they insisted). Shearn has a powerful empathy for the lost and the damaged, and she does well by this little family of misfits; she is less convincing with middle-class success stories (Kit, a snippy control freak, is a caricature), and the drama inherent in the Susannah/Julian/Kit triangle goes to waste. Her narrativeskills are often ragged, with viewpoints sliding around like butter in a skillet, and the climax is botched. Shearn only needs to add artistic discipline to her other gifts to be a formidable talent. Agent: PJ Mark/McCormick & Williams Literary Agency