Heller McAlpin in The Christian Science Monitor:
Despite its initially disappointing reception in 1851, Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” eventually earned a place in the American literary canon, leading to a tidal wave of biographies, doctoral theses, and spinoffs. The latest is Tara Karr Roberts’ beautifully conceived debut novel, “Wild and Distant Seas,” which deserves a prime spot on the shelf of Melvilleana.
Neither prequel nor sequel, “Wild and Distant Seas” – like Sena Jeter Naslund’s 1999 novel “Ahab’s Wife” – is an inventive, atmospheric, female-centric story spun from a minor character in “Moby-Dick.” It’s unlikely that readers will remember Mrs. Hosea Hussey, who, in her husband’s absence, serves Melville’s narrator, Ishmael, and his sidekick, Queequeg, some of her “surpassingly excellent” chowder before putting them up at the Try Pots Inn in Nantucket, Massachusetts, the “fishiest of all fishy places,” as Melville describes it.