Pent-up Seas

A potpourri of atypical cruise participants come together on a long trip to the South Atlantic, at once holding tight their histories, anxieties and dreams, even as they share the geography and taste bits of the culture around them. As it narrates each level of human grief and the curative power of the sea, the story rises above a geographic journey to capture what the critic Mikhail Bakhttin described as "man .. drenched in muteness and invisibility. And with them... loneliness." . We meet the survivors: octogenarian Eve, the never-quite- settled mother of five contrary adult children, determined to use up her settlement from a now deceased and long-divorced husband; Eyore- moody iconoclast and timid 75-year old Dave, gifted the trip by an estranged senior brother and expecting it to be his final escape; gracious but distracted Japanese-American GI-wife and now widow, Yokio, doggedly seeking to show her ability to yet charter a new history; and the mysteriously solitary Angela, scribbling her poetry of hope and guilt as she moves on the edges of the others' spheres, grieving lost people and celebrating the magic of old memories.