Chasing at the Surface

Sometimes finding your way home takes more than courage. It takes a leap of faith.

Chasing at the Surface tells the story of a young girl’s courage and the healing power of nature. After her mother unexpectedly leaves home, twelve-year old Marisa struggles with her feelings of loss and abandonment just as a pod of nineteen orca whales—mothers with their new calves following a run of chum salmon—become trapped in the enclosed inlet near her Northwest home. Marisa’s journey to help the whales find their way home brings her to a new understanding of the assaults humans have had on nature, and the complicated meaning of family and home.

Sharon Mentyka is a graduate of the MFA program of the Whidbey Writers Workshop and she has had stories and essays published in various literary magazines for both children and adults, including Columbia Kids, a publication of the Washington State History Museum, Soundings Review, and Cricket magazine. B in the World, an illustrated chapter book for children ages four to seven about a gender nonconforming child, was published in 2014.