Deep Salt Water

Book excerpt: "Deep Salt Water is an intimate memoir about abortion, expressed through a layering of language and imagery of the ocean. The story gravitates around the reconnection and ongoing entanglements of a couple who'd had an abortion twenty years earlier. Interdisciplinary in nature and entre-genre in style, Deep Salt Water is organized as thirty-seven separate pieces, divided into three sections (or 'trimesters') that detail the couple's love affair and unwanted pregnancy; the abortion itself; their separation and tenuous reconnection; and the sorrowful, urgent attempt to come to terms with the abortion and its consequences. Included in its pages are two innovative elements-a series of collages by visual artist Catherine Mellinger and a section entitled the 'Afterbirth, ' which discusses environmental issues that informed Apostolides' writing and moves the book from a place of intense intimacy to an outward focus that engages with the broader world and our shared responsibility and hope."--