They are drawn to the sea with many being sailors, swimmers, divers, fisherman and aquatic biologists. Nessa tells Callie that her mother's family all live near the sea in many different countries throughout the world.

Callie's mom had a younger sister, Nessa, whom Callie is close to. In an effort to forget Maera's death, Callie and her father moved inland, the first few moves within the state of California. Callie was questioned but no one believed her story nor understood why Callie didn't help her mother. Then nine years ago, with her daughter Callie in a boat, Maera simply slipped into the water and disappeared, presumed drowned. Maera made sure the man she chose was someone she would never love and Alan Twaddle was certainly someone who fit that criteria -an academic buried in his research. We meet Callie's mother, Maera Morgan fifteen years earlier - a young woman who had carefully and in a calculating manner selected a lonely, passionless geoscience professor to marry and to give her a child. The opening chapters provide the back story, first fifteen and then nine years previously. The central character is sixteen year old Calypso (Callie) Morgan who lives with her professor father, Alan Twaddle and who struggles to cope with an unsettled life after a family tragedy. Inland is an atmospheric novel that leaves readers wondering whether the main character is insane or really is what she believes she is as suggested in the first chapter.

Inland by Kat Rosenfield