The Sea in Winter

The Sea in Winter is a 2019 children’s book by Indigenous American author Christine Day. The novel was a Top 10 Indie Kids’ Next Selection, a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Award, and an American Indian Youth Literature Award Honor Book. The story follows Maisie, an Indigenous girl struggling with mental distress after sustaining a leg injury that forces her to abandon dancing. As Maisie navigates the complexities of trauma, healing, and identity, she learns to embrace change and hope.

Day is an enrolled citizen of the Upper Skagit tribe and is known for writing novels about Indigenous youth. She grew up in Seattle and holds a master’s degree from the University of Washington. Her 2019 debut novel, I Can Make This Promise, was an NPR Best Book of the Year and a Charlotte Huck Award Honor Book. The Sea in Winter is her second novel.

This guide refers to the 2021 e-book edition published by Harper Collins.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of mental illness, death, racism, and child abuse.

Plot Summary

Maisie Cannon, an Indigenous girl, is recovering from a knee injury. On her last day at school before winter break, she is late for class and feels isolated during the lesson. When responding to the teacher’s writing prompt, she writes about how much she misses ballet and describes the joy and peace that it once offered her. After class, her teacher reprimands her for being late but suggests that she and the counselors can support her with her current troubles. However, Maisie is reluctant to speak. Instead, she embraces her loneliness and isolation, and she struggles to keep in touch with her best friends from dance class, especially when they share news about their own experiences with dance school auditions. Limited to crutches, Maisie enjoys spending time in the library as she immerses herself in fiction to assuage her distress.

Maisie lives with her mother, Angie Beaumont; her stepfather, Jack Leith; and her little brother, Connor Beaumont-Leith. Maisie’s mother, father, and stepfather are Indigenous, but they are all from different tribes. Her mother is Makah, her father was Piscataway, and her stepfather is from the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe. Maisie’s father, a soldier who was deployed in Afghanistan, died in action when she was very young. His death severely impacted Maisie’s mother, and for this reason, his absence weighs heavily on Maisie as well. She sympathizes with her mother’s struggles as a single mother and experiences feelings of guilt. However, her stepfather is a loving and protective man who treats her like his own daughter, and her brother is a joyful boy even if Maisie does sometimes find his energy exhausting.

When she returns home from school, she feels disconnected from her surroundings even in the midst of the family’s preparations for a road trip to the Olympic Peninsula. Rather than joining in, Maisie frequently reminisces about her dance school days, dreaming of taking up dancing again next summer. In the meantime, she follows her physical therapy routine with persistence and tries to ignore her worsening mental health and her feelings of anxiety and depression. Her mother suggests that the trip to the Makah homeland will offer the entire family a sense of peace and solace, but Maisie doubts it. She believes that the adult world is harsh and thinks that her parents cannot understand her. Maisie also resents their constant focus on politics and is also exasperated by her mother’s fixation on her phone.

When Jack reprimands her about her failing school grades, Maisie offers resistance but instantly regrets her behavior. Even though Jack has always been like her own father, she struggles to find a way to apologize to him, but Jack understands her pain and tries to connect with her. Throughout the trip, he offers Maisie and Connor various lessons on Indigenous history and culture. At the beach, he demonstrates how to dig for clams. As Maisie connects with the sea, Jack emphasizes the importance of thanking nature for ensuring people’s survival.

Later, during the family’s hike on the sea cliffs to Neah Bay, Maisie delights in the view from a scenic overlook and feels like she is in a dance studio. She feels energized and revitalized in nature, finding the same sense of peace that she has experienced with dancing. The hike is a grounding experience for Maisie, who begins to regain her sense of balance in life. However, when she sustains a second leg injury during the hike, this misfortune hinders her journey toward recovery all over again.

With this new injury, Maisie must endure the trauma of hospitalization and feels that her dancing dreams are now over. Although she did not severely damage her leg, she will not be able to return to dancing anytime soon. Feeling a sense of failure, she acts out against her mother, criticizing her for being on the phone. However, her mother is understanding and empowers her daughter by sharing her own experiences of loss and trauma. She explains that she was also traumatized as a child when she was removed from her homeland due to threats of violence that followed the whaling revival. Similarly, the death of her husband felt like the end of the world for her, but she explains that she learned to endure and face life’s struggles with resilience. She tells Maisie that she focused her energy on reconnecting with her community and the stories of her ancestors, and she urges her daughter to find a new passion and embrace change as a part of life. Jack emphasizes to Maisie that she has not failed; she is simply moving forward.

Four months later, Maisie volunteers for the library and finds a new passion for storytelling. She has made new friends among the other volunteers and continues to focus on her recovery. She also attends therapy sessions that help her manage her emotions and understand how to process her trauma and frustration. As she reconnects with her family, she also starts to communicate with her father’s family and re-establishes her connections with friends from the dance school. Even though she still misses dancing, Maisie embraces her new reality with hope. At school, she channels her energy into writing and hopes to join her teacher’s creative writing class. Her parents gift her a notebook with a ballerina on the cover, and Maisie envisions writing a story in the future. When the family embarks on a new road trip to the Elwha River, Maisie knows that the experience will be beautiful.