NOVEL THOUGHTS
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WILLIAM MORROW, 1999
(available in paperback from Perennial, 2000)
Ahab’s Wife, Sena Jeter Naslund’s feminist reinterpretation of Herman Melville’s classic, Moby-Dick, centers on the famous Captain Ahab’s wife, to whom Melville makes but brief reference in his novel. Naslund chronicles the life and spiritual journey of Una Spenser against the backdrop of nineteenth-century America.
Una’s story is part romance, part adventure, and part family drama. At age twelve, she escapes from her tyrannical father in Kentucky and goes to live with relatives in a New England lighthouse. The sea and the ocean-adventure stories of two visiting New Bedford sailors, Giles Bonebright and Kit Sparrow, enrapture Una. Freethinking, bold, and independent, Una leaves her aunt and uncle’s home at sixteen, disguises herself as a cabin boy, and joins Giles and Kit for a whaling expedition.
Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequot rescue Una and Kit after a harrowing shipwreck. The two marry, but the marriage doesn’t survive Kit’s descent into madness, a consequence of his ordeal at sea.
Una and Ahab meet again on Nantucket, fall in love, and marry. Theirs is a happy marriage despite Ahab’s extended absences as a whaleboat captain. Una raises their child, explores religion, and befriends leading intellectuals of the day, including the feminist Margaret Fuller, the astronomer Maria Mitchell, and the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Through illness, loss, and catastrophe, including the tragic end of her husband’s epic struggle with the great white whale, Una perseveres.
Spinning a tale is sometimes like stirring a chowder. Steam and mist will rise up, different particles are whiffed from the broth,” writes Naslund in a chapter of Ahab’s Wife called “Chowder Swirls.” Chowder was ever-present in nineteenth-century New England, and Ahab’s Wife is suffused with descriptions of rich, creamy chowders. When Una meets Kit at her aunt and uncle’s home in New Bedford, “the odor of fish chowder laced with onion and celery filled the room.”
Chowder greets Kit and Una when they first come ashore in Nantucket after surviving the shipwreck. Mr. Hussey, proprietor of the Try Pots Tavern, famous for its chowders, beckons them to come back to the tavern so Mrs. Hussey can “feed you chowder till it flows from your ears.” Soon Kit and Una are sitting down to “thick-sided, heat-holding bowls of thick creamy chowder.”
The chowder in Ahab’s Wife even seems to have healing powers: “When Ahab came home still bleeding, his soul raging, it was the Husseys’ chowder fortified with sweet butter, for which he had the best tolerance,” says Una. When Una is sick, Mrs. Hussey brings her bowls of chowder. Later, when Una works in the tavern, she says that “merely dishing up and delivering the chowder kept me on the trot.”
Chowders had their origins as a seamen’s dish, but eventually “came ashore to mean both the stew and the event at which it was served,” explains Mark Zanger in The American History Cookbook (Greenwood Press, 2003). Chowders gained in popularity and, in coastal homes throughout New England, became the centerpiece of dinner, according to Jasper White, author of 50 Chowders: One Pot Meals—Clam, Corn and Beyond (Simon & Schuster, 2000). Chowder picnics were common on New England beaches in the nineteenth century, with chowder-filled kettles hung over open fires. With freshly caught fish, chowder-making was “part of the entertainment,” writes White.
Chowder as we know it today has evolved over the centuries. According to White, the earliest American recipes for chowders included fish and shipboard supplies, such as onion, pork, biscuits (hardtack), and spices, layered as in a casserole. Ingredients such as milk, cream, butter, and potatoes did not appear in chowders until the mid-1800s in northern New England.
Jan Keshen of Tallahassee, Florida, treated her book club, the LunaChics Literary Guild, to this seafood chowder when they discussed Ahab’s Wife. “I was inspired by the small chowder house in Nantucket where Una was living,” says Keshen, who developed her own recipe after reading many fish and seafood chowder recipes in cookbooks, magazines, and on the Internet. Keshen’s version of the creamy soup—filled with fish, clams, shrimp, and scallops—is truly a fisherman’s delight. Keshen suggests serving it with a green salad and crusty French bread.
NOTE: For a thicker chowder, mash a few of the potatoes with a potato masher before adding the fish.
6 strips bacon (may substitute turkey bacon) 2 large onions, diced 4 stalks celery, chopped 2 bay leaves 1 ½ pounds Yukon gold potatoes, diced 1 ½ cups fish, seafood, or chicken stock 1 8-ounce bottle clam juice ½ cup white wine 8 sprigs fresh thyme, or ½ teaspoon dried 1 teaspoon kosher salt Freshly ground black pepper |
½ pound firm, white-fleshed fish, cut into small cubes ¾ pound bay or sea scallops 1 ¾ pound shrimp, peeled and deveined 2 cups whole milk or half-and-half 4 cups fresh corn (may substitute frozen kernels, defrosted) 1 10-ounce can minced or whole baby clams, with juice ¼cup chopped parsley |
In a large Dutch oven, sauté the bacon (use a little olive oil for turkey bacon) until crisp. Drain on paper towels. Chop or crumble the bacon and set aside.
Add the onions, celery, and bay leaves to remaining fat and sauté until soft, about 7 minutes. Add the potatoes, stock, clam juice, wine, and enough water to cover. Simmer uncovered about 10 minutes or until the potatoes are just cooked. Remove the bay leaves.
Add the thyme, salt, and pepper, and adjust seasonings to taste. Add the fish, scallops, and shrimp and cook 3–5 minutes, until just done. Add the milk, corn, clams, and parsley. Heat through. Serve topped with bacon pieces as garnish.
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
NOVEL THOUGHTS
Our Book Group Kicks Your Book Group’s Butt Book Club (that’s really their name) of Missoula, Montana, says Sena Jeter Naslund’s Ahab’s Wife was a top reading selection. “We gave Ahab’s Wife a ten,” says Mark Sherouse, “and we give very few of these scores.”
The group enjoyed Naslund’s concept of revising a classic novel and telling it from a woman’s point of view. “Her feminist response to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick was spectacular,” says Sherouse. “Most of the so-called classics were written by men, about men. Ahab’s Wife turns the tables, and Naslund does it brilliantly, capturing the nineteenth-century style, but making it intelligible and interesting to a twenty-first-century reader. The cred-ible voice, the panoramic historical sweep, the social issues addressed, the moments of drama, the many points of contact with Melville’s fictional world all make Ahab’s Wife a superb revisionary novel.”
Their enjoyment of Ahab’s Wife inspired members of the group to read, or reread, Moby-Dick. “I suppose that’s the ultimate compliment to Naslund,” says Sherouse. “But we came to the conclusion that her book was better.”
Julia Shanks of Interactive Cuisine in Cambridge, Massachusetts, creates menus to match literary selections for book clubs in the Boston area. Ahab’s Wife inspired two book club menus.
“Nantucket and New Bedford are famous for their scallops,” says Shanks, “and I also incorporated food reflecting the book’s southern setting, as Una was raised in and returns to Kentucky.” Fried chicken, for instance, is served aboard the whaling ship Sussex in the novel, and Shanks pairs it with coleslaw, a traditional accompaniment. To both recipes she added flavors from the apple pie mentioned in Ahab’s Wife—apples and cinnamon. Una savors her mother’s Kentucky jam cake, made with spices and jam, and topped with caramel frosting, at home in Kentucky. In Nantucket, her cousin Frannie delights her by baking the cake from the recipe Una had given her. Here is the first of Shanks’s menus:
Grilled Bacon–Wrapped Bay Scallops
Cinnamon Fried Chicken and Curried Coleslaw with Apples and Raisins
Kentucky Jam Cake
Shanks’s second menu features the more traditional New England dishes that Una’s friend Judge serves when he invites Una, the astronomer Maria Mitchell, and Mitchell’s father to dinner. For dessert Shanks chose apple pie, which Frannie bakes for Una at the end of Ahab’s Wife.
Baked Scrod Stuffed with Bread Crumbs and Scallops
Mashed Potatoes and Buttered Peas
Apple Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream