Spirit Lines: Written in the Sound
Contributed by Holly Gittlein
I didn’t set out to write a novel. I started it alone on a remote island in Prince William Sound, working as a whale researcher with no cell service, no distractions and a lot of weather. Long days on the water. Long nights listening. The kind of place where your mind either settles or cracks open.
Somewhere in there, the story came through.
Spirit Lines: The Great Separation was written in pieces between field notes, tide shifts and the constant presence of whales moving through the Sound. It didn’t feel like inventing something new as much as paying attention to something that was already there.
On the surface, it’s a young adult adventure. A girl, a journey, a world that starts to break open.
Underneath, it’s about something most people who’ve spent time in Alaska already know, that the line between human life and the natural world isn’t as solid as we pretend it is. That separation is, in many ways, the real illusion.
This book carries that tension. Science and mystery. Logic and instinct. Control and surrender. The question of what happens when the systems we trust stop making sense and something older starts calling.
The official release is May 19. I’ll be launching it in the water. Not as a stunt, but because it’s the only way that feels honest for a story that came from the ocean in the first place.
This project started in Alaska, but it belongs to anyone who has felt that pull, out on the water, on the land or in those quiet moments where something deeper starts to come through.
If you want to follow the project, see where it goes or connect: hollygittlein.com
I’m also opening the door to a small number of final early readers before launch. Sign up here: hollygittlein.com/about-3