“Maybe I’m going feral in my old age. I find that the older I get, the more baffling it all is, the more the mystery deepens. I want wildness, some tangled-ness. The work of writers late in life often becomes more iconoclastic: they want to break, to get beyond where they’ve been. You better make friends with mystery because that’s where you are heading, lady!”

So says Julia Alvarez in an article by Poets & Writers entitled “The Wildness and the Mystery.”

I couldn’t agree more. This article spoke to me on so many levels.

The words “wildness” and “mystery” have always drawn me as a writer. When I created this website fifteen years ago I called it “Living on the Edge of the Wild” because I was writing about when we were sailing around the world, living, truly, at the edge of the wild with that deep mysterious sea beneath us and the capricious winds and waves that drew us forward. My first post started out this way:

• I created this blog to explore what it means to be living on the edge of the wild. We all are, in some way, living on the edge of the wild, either literally or figuratively, whether we know it or not. We all are standing at the edge of some great unknown, exploring what it means to be human in a more-than-human universe. We encounter the “wild” not only in the natural world, but in ourselves and our daily lives, if only in our own strange dreams, our own unruly minds and rebellious bodies, our own inscrutable families and weird and wonderful pets. We encounter the “wild” at the edges of science, the arts, and human consciousness.

I changed the title to “Writing on the Edge of the Wild” when I turned this into an author site and began publishing.

The “wild” denotes the unknown, the mysteries of life that draw us to explore further. It’s the thing I love most about writing, discovering what I never knew I knew before I began to write it, as if the words themselves are drawn from some inner well of insight or vision I never knew I had.

“We create ourselves out of our innermost intuitions,” so writes a sage.

I believe that. And I also believe our characters are created in much of the same way. I wonder if we all contain multiple characters within us that make themselves known to us through our writing? Or are we just writing our larger selves?

Perhaps all the selves of all the people we’ve come to know, to experience, in this wider world, once known, become part of us, at least partially?

I believe there is a collective consciousness that we tap into from time to time, and writers, perhaps, most of all.

Alvarez at 76 is still writing, still exploring, still discovering what it means to be alive, to be a woman, to be a writer seeking wildness and mystery. And while she has been writing for forty years and I am only just beginning my career, we share that in common.

Moreover, her novel In the Time of the Butterflies about the Mirabal sisters, four woman who fought to overthrow the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, was an inspiration for my own novel This Sea Within about another woman revolutionary.

There’s something intrinsically “wild” about a revolution, and contains its own mystery: Will the revolutionaries prevail? And if they do, will what they create last? Will it be worth the cost in lives?

The answer to the last two questions is always in limbo to some degree. Time will only tell. And the telling time for our own American revolution as we near 250 years is still, sadly, an open question.

We do live in wild and mysterious times, don’t we? Is there any other kind? We might as well embrace it.

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This Sea Within – For all Revolutionaries at Heart

What early readers are saying

“For those looking for well-written, epic protest literature that delivers a mesmerizing climax. Deborah J. Brasket captivated me with the seductive allure of an idealism of a powerful revolution and how it connects with nuanced morality. This Sea Within features complex and revolutionary characters, exciting prose, and streams of consciousness that lay bare the psyche of the key characters. Fans of The Red Sparrow trilogy by Jason Matthews and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini will enjoy how this book explores the way personal passion becomes inseparable from the cataclysm of history.” Divine Zape, Readers’ Favorite ★★★★★

“A captivating love story about freedom, rebellion, and willingness to die for one’s principles. It kept me turning pages late into the night.” D. W. Peach, award-winning fantasy writer

“A bold story about passionate people fighting for what they believe in, This Sea Within is an intimate coming of age novel perfect for readers who appreciate artful, poetic fiction with the highest stakes.” Nicky Flowers, Indies Today ★★★★★

“A stirring reminder that love lies at the heart of every revolution, This Sea Within by Deborah J. Brasket is a coming-of-age drama set against the civil unrest and rebellious spirit of the Yucatan Peninsula in the early 1970s. Encapsulating the “constant warfare and clash of civilizations” in the divided loyalties of one young woman, the novel probes the granular moments of building character – the dissecting, undoing, and remaking that defines our destiny. The prose is marked by lyrical imagery and visceral depictions of exotic landscapes, along with an unflinching dive into taboo ideas, making this an impressively timely and radical read, no matter the historical setting.” SPR Review

Ready for Pre-order on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, and Bookshop.

Release Date, June 15