In 1859, Penelope finds herself alone, orphaned and widowed. She learns that her inheritance from father and husband are invested in a whaling ship, complete with captain, Micah Daggett. She casts caution to the winds and sails with the ship as the captain''s wife. Unexpectedly, she falls in love. During the four-year journey they encounter exotic people and places, romantic and soul-searching times. Their love is tested by confinement of the ship and by duties that pull them apart, like waves that clash and come together on foreign shores. A nefarious Fist Mate dies mysteriously at sea. Penelope suffers a miscarriage. They discover that Micah has a bastard son in Rarotonga, a South Pacific island, and take him with them. Penelope is left behind in Honolulu, with the ten-year old boy, while Micah hunts whales in the Bering Sea. Penelope gives up hope and imagines finding comfort with another man. Micah returns. Eventually they find their place in the world, a safe harbor, San Francisco.
Virginia van Druten is the author of Passage Through History, a novel telling of a woman''s experiences in the Civil War. Bound to Sea is about another woman''s adventures and perils at sea during the same period. Van Druten writes of women finding their strength when tested.
Van Druten is a member of Romance Writer''s of America, Historical Novel Society, and California Writer''s Club.
Penelope could only see his back, but the stranger was broad-shouldered though of only middling height. He still wore a long jacket of coarse dark wool, and was just now removing his knit watch cap. His blazing red hair was pulled back with a piece of twine into a springy ponytail falling past his collar. His beard and mustache, a darker color like burnished copper, merged with it near his ears. He looked like a common seaman. Surely this couldn''t be Micah Daggett, the man to whom she was entrusting her fortune.