The Sea Road

A haunting and compelling historical novel, The Sea Road is an ambitious retelling of the Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman, as transcribed by an Icelandic monk commissioned to write her life story by his superiors in Rome. Gudrid lives at the remote edge of the known world, in a starkly beautiful landscape where the sea is the only connection to the shores beyond. It is a world where the old Norse gods are still invoked, even as Christianity gains favor, where the spirits of the dead roam the vast northern ice fields, tormenting the living, and Viking explorers plunder foreign shores. Taking the accidental discovery of North America as its focal point, Gudrid's narrative describes a multilayered voyage into the unknown, all recounted with astonishing immediacy and rich atmospheric detail.