What happens when, in the middle of a happy heterosexual marriage, a woman falls in love with another woman?

The Swift Dark Tide is a story of selfhood and desire, of careful listening to an ungovernable heart.

Part memoir, part love letter, The Swift Dark Tide is also a chronicle of life by the sea, journeying between Melbourne’s St Kilda and the Black Sea town of Odessa. Katia Ariel introduces us to a lineage of soulful, strident women and beautifully nuanced men. She invites us into home and heart to witness love, loss and joy, motherhood, daughterhood and the urgent wildness of the body.