Near the beginning of We Ran Away to Sea, Pam leaves Kent and the boat, taking the two boys and fleeing back to familiar Brookings, South Dakota. He is not sure whether she will ever come back. She does, but not for the long-term that he envisions. The tension between Kent’s dreams and Pam’s, between their love for each other and their different goals and perspectives is the essence of We Ran Away to Sea. Uniquely written in two voices, the reader experiences the struggles and the rewards of their love for each other and their determination to stay together despite their differences.
As Thomas Hübl writes in Attuned, “We could think of marriage as a process of learning and becoming aware of everything we missed about our spouse when we first fell in love.” (84)
I attempted to capture the essence of this struggle in the very short video, Pamela or Panama?
Jacana Press 