REVIEW
Allison Field Bell's Edge of the Sea
Edge of the Sea is a stirring collection of memoir essays by Allison Field Bell that arrests with its honesty and awes with its depth of observation.
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Field Bell’s candor and poetic soundscape transport us as she translates the slippery substance that is memory into image and scene. In the opening, titular essay, we meet Field Bell, a young child, standing in the shallows, holding her mother’s hand. It’s a beautiful day. Except it’s not. A sleeper wave makes for Field Bell’s ankle—“And abruptly, I am pulled in the cold white saltwater, my feet freed from the earth”—until her mother grabs her, plants her back on the sand.
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And so, we begin. For it is us Field Bell has by the hand now, our guide along this craggy shore.
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In thirteen essays, which flow in loose chronological order, Field Bell explores her coming of age and coming of sexuality. We stand with her as she examines her battles with substance abuse, her volatile relationship with her mother, and her experiences with trauma and assault. Yet, this summary is incomplete. Field Bell is a writer who eschews binaries. Hers is an expansive view. The collection is like the sea in this way. Vast and beautiful. Inky and dangerous. Stunning. All of these at once. By the time we reach the capstone essay, “Mother Story,” we understand Field Bell’s gaze has always been intertwined with her mother’s—each informed by the other. Field Bell observes: “This is supposed to be my mother’s story, but I can’t get away from mine.” Wisely, she does not try. Their stories are different. Their stories are the same. Both are true.
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This multi-generational lens is, in fact, the point. In the final essay, “We’re at the Ocean,” Field Bell recounts a seaside day with her young niece and nephew. Their play is so carefree, and Field Bell so cognizant of the undertow that lurks, of the fact that violence—and who is vulnerable—is both random and predictable. We sit with Field Bell in this heightened state of awareness, mindful of what our parents (and their parents and theirs) must have felt watching us, how the waves must have bit their toes as they nip ours now, all of us chancing the radical act of letting the next generation experience the sea.
Book Details
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Published by CutBank Books. The volume is 5.5”x 8.5” and is comprised of 41 pages of prose. The cover has a thickness and silkiness that makes the volume lovely to hold. The paper is a pleasing color of cream.
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Edge of the Sea can be purchased here. To order a signed copy, contact Allison Field Bell directly.
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BIO
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Allison Field Bell is a multi-genre writer originally from California. She is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Utah, and she has an MFA in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University. Her debut poetry collection, All That Blue, is forthcoming in 2026. Allison's prose appears or is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, River Teeth, SmokeLong Quarterly, DIAGRAM, The Gettysburg Review, The Adroit Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, West Branch, and elsewhere. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Smartish Pace, Passages North, RHINO Poetry, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. Find her at allisonfieldbell.com.
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OTHER BOOKS
Without Woman or Body (Finishing Line Press)
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SOCIAL MEDIA
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Bluesky: ‪‪@allisonfieldbell
Twitter (X): @afb16
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