I am excited to be participating in a book blog tour for Deborah J. Brasket’s second novel, This Sea Within. I had read and reviewed her debut novel When Things Go Missing (which you can read here). To whet your appetite for this second novel, here’s the copy from the back cover as well as an excerpt from the first chapter.
Back Cover
She came to find herself. She stayed to fight a revolution. Some waves you can’t outrun.
While American students protest the Vietnam war, rebellion brews below the border where a U.S.-backed dictator rule.
Lena Landon, an avid surfer and anti-war activist, wants to do something meaningful when she graduates with a degree in journalism. Feeling the sea’s restless energy pushing her toward some unknown destiny, she travels to San Balanque, her estranged mother’s homeland, to learn more about her Maya heritage.
There Lena teams up with fellow journalist Daniel Weatherly to interview the Aguileros fighting to overthrow Viktor Ortiz’s corrupt regime. Then she sees Raoul—the rebels’ charismatic leader—rising from a jungle pool. Everything changes. That dark wave sweeps her into a life she never imagined.
Lena’s transformation from pacifist to freedom fighter comes at a brutal cost as she witnesses the harsh realities of guerrilla warfare: executions, kidnapping, torture. All the while she guards a dangerous secret: her mother, the esteemed artist Dolores Machado, is married to the enemy—Ortiz’s Vice President and closest confidant.
As the revolution intensifies, Lena must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice for love, justice, and a cause worth dying for.
Excerpt from Chapter One: Opening Paragraphs
Lena feels him before she sees him—the slow roll of the wave’s hip rising behind her, towering over her, propelling her forward. Heart pounding, she paddles furiously to keep him within her grasp, then pops-up in a low crouch on her surfboard, arms wide as she pulls in and out of the wave.
He’s everywhere, everything at once now—beneath her, above her, around her. Wave, body, board—all one slow motion as his arms wrap around her. She slips into the shimmering blue grotto of his body, thrilling at the sight, her fingers trailing his trembling flesh. He melts at her touch. She shivers with delight while dancing in and out of his reach and dissolving into one liquid moment of bliss. When the ride ends and wave, body, board, separate into their several selves, Lena kicks her board around and paddles out to start over.
Some see the ocean as a feminine presence, but Lena never has. How could she? All that power and restless energy, the sheer weight and bulk of it. Something in the sea’s dark, hypnotic presence, its great heaving muscles and ceaseless motion, calls to her. Calls to a restless yearning, a heated passion, stirring just below the surface of her skin.
Stars were still shivering in the cold, moist air when Lonny, her surfing buddy and best friend, picked her up in his van, eager to test the huge waves thundering up the coast from a hurricane blowing off Baja. He gave up after two wipe-outs, but Lena wasn’t ready to come in. When he beckons her to come ashore now, she holds up two fingers. Two more dances with the sea’s wanton waves, then she’ll come.
Her dad taught her to surf when she was six years old, one year after her mother left. One year after she almost lost him to the grief and sickness that followed. Surfing was the way they grew stronger together and closer without her. The way they learned they didn’t need her after all. They had each other.
At first, they surfed tandem, her lying prone in front as he paddled out on his longboard. By the time Lena turned ten she had her own board, lighter and shorter. She learned to brace herself against the biting cold of the breakers’ fiercely grinning teeth, to be as stubborn and fierce as the waves themselves. And once she was past them, she learned how to patiently await the perfect wave to ride, how to recognize the heft and weight of it rising behind her. She learned how strong and powerful she could become by surrendering to it as it surrendered to her. How to become one.
BIO
After sailing around the world with her husband and children, teaching literature to college students, and fighting for affordable housing as the leader of a nonprofit, Deborah J. Brasket finally settled down among the golden hills and vineyards of California’s central coast to write the kinds of novels she loves to read. Her debut novel When Things Go Missing was published in September 2025. Her second novel This Sea Within will be released on June 15, 2026.
www.facebook.com/DeborahJBrasket
www.deborahbrasket.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/deborah-brasket
BOOK GIVEAWAY
Please bookmark this page and join us on the tour! You will have a chance to win a free copy of either This Sea Within or When Things Go Missing, Deborah’s debut novel. All you have to do is subscribe to her blog if you haven’t already and leave a comment on the participating sites listed below. Three lucky readers will receive their choice of an ebook.
Tuesday, June 9 – Teri M. Brown, Author and Host of Online for Authors podcast: PODCAST
Wednesday, June 10 – Beth Kennedy, Author and Blogger, I Didn’t Have My Glasses On: EXCERPT
Thursday, June 11 – Vicki Atkinson, Author and Blogger, Victoria Ponders : REVIEW
Saturday, June 13 – Marie Bailey, Writer and Blogger at 1 Write Way and Substack Newsletter: EXCERPT
Monday, June 15 – THIS SEA WITHIN RELEASE! Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Bookshop.
Wednesday, June 17 – Dawn Pisturino, Author, Poet, Blogger, My Writing Journey: REVIEW
Friday, June 19 – Wynne Leon & Vicki Atkinson, Authors and Hosts of The Heart of the Matter podcast: PODCAST
Saturday, June 20 – Peter Springer, Teacher, Author, & Blogger at Pete’s Blog: REVIEW
This Sea Within is ready for pre-order at Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, and Bookshop.
Release Date, June 15, 2026.
Read more about This Sea Within, including reviews from early readers HERE.
Thank you for reading!
Marie at 1 Write Way 