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I Watched You from the Ocean Floor
I Watched You from the Ocean Floor is an evocative debut story collection that explores the depths of grief and loss. The women and young girls in these stories lose their mothers, their best friends, their husbands, their homes—and yet, they are not simply wailing widows or distraught daughters. Erin Cecilia Thomas writes elegiac narratives that are also portraits of strength, resilience, and grit as her characters move through their grief and the beautifully rugged landscapes along the California coast, Tennessee farmland, and New Jersey suburbs.
In “A Rapture Coming,” a husband and wife have very different reactions to losing their home to a wildfire. The young girl in “The Shed” strategizes on how to save her family’s farm animals—and herself—after her mother passes away. In “So You May Sleep Again,” a thorny widow runs into trouble embroidering faces of departed loved ones onto pillowcases. The children in “The Hall of Life” try to envision bright futures as their lives are made uncertain by war.
Poignant and haunting, I Watched You from the Ocean Floor provides eleven vignettes on what it means to grieve and to keep on living.
Early
“With profound insights and a delicious wry sense of humor, Erin Cecilia Thomas deftly interlaces the tribulations, sorrows, and absurdities of our modern era with the timeless conditions of human nature. Grappling with love, loss, death, and the little tragedies of daily life, her characters are familiar to us, yet decidedly fresh, unique, and fully alive. Each of these darkly comic stories brings its own startling, stunning, and haunting inevitable surprise. I Watched You from the Ocean Floor is a disquieting and joyful read. A masterful collection!”
—Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of Rabbits for Food and Counting Backwards
“Thomas delivers her lonely characters to us in gorgeous prose, crisp and clear as ice, while beneath we glimpse leviathans of dread. I turned every page in terror and anticipation. What a stunning debut!”
—Melanie Finn, author of The Hare
“A sonorous and stunning debut! I Watched You from the Ocean Floor deftly navigates the impossible weight of living and loving. For this inevitable journey, Thomas steadfastly guides us; to challenge isolationism in the face of global climate crisis, to defy the collective violence of the 21st century, to look down the long, dark hallway of our futures and dare not blink. In a world where grief threatens to drown us, it’s art like this that teaches us how to swim.”
—Loie Rawding, author of Tight Little Vocal Cords
“The characters in these deeply imaginative stories are often on the run from natural and man-made disasters, loss, and disappointment, only to discover hope again in the place where they in human connection and the power of their own dreams. An original and moving debut collection.”
—Hester Kaplan, author of Unravished
“Erin Cecilia Thomas writes eloquently of grief and the ways that individuals living on the margins—whether through climate apocalypse or simply high school cliquishness—seek to make connection with others.
In “A Rapture Coming,” a husband and wife have very different reactions to losing their home to a wildfire. The young girl in “The Shed” strategizes on how to save her family’s farm animals—and herself—after her mother passes away. In “So You May Sleep Again,” a thorny widow runs into trouble embroidering faces of departed loved ones onto pillowcases. The children in “The Hall of Life” try to envision bright futures as their lives are made uncertain by war.
Poignant and haunting, I Watched You from the Ocean Floor provides eleven vignettes on what it means to grieve and to keep on living.
Early
“With profound insights and a delicious wry sense of humor, Erin Cecilia Thomas deftly interlaces the tribulations, sorrows, and absurdities of our modern era with the timeless conditions of human nature. Grappling with love, loss, death, and the little tragedies of daily life, her characters are familiar to us, yet decidedly fresh, unique, and fully alive. Each of these darkly comic stories brings its own startling, stunning, and haunting inevitable surprise. I Watched You from the Ocean Floor is a disquieting and joyful read. A masterful collection!”
—Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of Rabbits for Food and Counting Backwards
“Thomas delivers her lonely characters to us in gorgeous prose, crisp and clear as ice, while beneath we glimpse leviathans of dread. I turned every page in terror and anticipation. What a stunning debut!”
—Melanie Finn, author of The Hare
“A sonorous and stunning debut! I Watched You from the Ocean Floor deftly navigates the impossible weight of living and loving. For this inevitable journey, Thomas steadfastly guides us; to challenge isolationism in the face of global climate crisis, to defy the collective violence of the 21st century, to look down the long, dark hallway of our futures and dare not blink. In a world where grief threatens to drown us, it’s art like this that teaches us how to swim.”
—Loie Rawding, author of Tight Little Vocal Cords
“The characters in these deeply imaginative stories are often on the run from natural and man-made disasters, loss, and disappointment, only to discover hope again in the place where they in human connection and the power of their own dreams. An original and moving debut collection.”
—Hester Kaplan, author of Unravished
“Erin Cecilia Thomas writes eloquently of grief and the ways that individuals living on the margins—whether through climate apocalypse or simply high school cliquishness—seek to make connection with others.
195 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 1, 2025
3 people are currently reading
106 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 2, 2025
So many thanks to Modern Artist Press for this ARC!
Overall rating: 5⭐️
Individual story ratings:
A Rapture Coming - 5⭐️
So You May Sleep Again - 5⭐️
The Shed - 4.5⭐️
Juniper - 5⭐️
A Tilt Before the Sea - 4⭐️
Fake Bodies - 4⭐️
I Watched You from the Ocean Floor - 4.5⭐️
Washington Avenue - 4.5⭐️
I May - 4.5⭐️
The Row - 5⭐️
The Hall of Life - 4.5⭐️
Favorites: Juniper, So You May Sleep Again, The Row
This collection has truly blown me away—each story is packed to the brim with life and emotion, and so many of them left me feeling absolutely wrecked (in a good way, I promise).
You can really feel how much care Thomas put into the writing of these stories. Each main character has a different background and is in vastly different circumstances, but she somehow manages to do them all equal justice, making them feel so real and easy to connect to. While we’re given brief moments with these characters, I walked away from each story feeling like I knew and understood them.
I find that that’s difficult to do with short stories—while I’m generally a fan of the medium, I’m often left wanting more because I felt I wasn’t told or shown enough to make me care, to really connect. Here, I’m left wanting more because Thomas’s writing is so beautiful and thoughtful, yet simultaneously comes across as effortless and natural; I enjoyed it so much that I just didn’t want it to come to an end.
This collection is described as “eleven vignettes on what it means to grieve and keep on living,” and I can’t think of a better way to summarize it. This easily makes my top three collections I’ve ever read, and these characters and their stories are going to stay with me for a long, long time.
(Sidenote: I desperately want The Shed to be a full-length novel, I think it would be brilliant)
Overall rating: 5⭐️
Individual story ratings:
A Rapture Coming - 5⭐️
So You May Sleep Again - 5⭐️
The Shed - 4.5⭐️
Juniper - 5⭐️
A Tilt Before the Sea - 4⭐️
Fake Bodies - 4⭐️
I Watched You from the Ocean Floor - 4.5⭐️
Washington Avenue - 4.5⭐️
I May - 4.5⭐️
The Row - 5⭐️
The Hall of Life - 4.5⭐️
Favorites: Juniper, So You May Sleep Again, The Row
This collection has truly blown me away—each story is packed to the brim with life and emotion, and so many of them left me feeling absolutely wrecked (in a good way, I promise).
You can really feel how much care Thomas put into the writing of these stories. Each main character has a different background and is in vastly different circumstances, but she somehow manages to do them all equal justice, making them feel so real and easy to connect to. While we’re given brief moments with these characters, I walked away from each story feeling like I knew and understood them.
I find that that’s difficult to do with short stories—while I’m generally a fan of the medium, I’m often left wanting more because I felt I wasn’t told or shown enough to make me care, to really connect. Here, I’m left wanting more because Thomas’s writing is so beautiful and thoughtful, yet simultaneously comes across as effortless and natural; I enjoyed it so much that I just didn’t want it to come to an end.
This collection is described as “eleven vignettes on what it means to grieve and keep on living,” and I can’t think of a better way to summarize it. This easily makes my top three collections I’ve ever read, and these characters and their stories are going to stay with me for a long, long time.
(Sidenote: I desperately want The Shed to be a full-length novel, I think it would be brilliant)
July 4, 2025
Don’t ask me how many times I read “So You May Sleep Again” unless you want to know that the answer is 6.
5 stars, no notes!
5 stars, no notes!
November 7, 2025
This might be my favorite collection of short stories EVER! Each & every one is like a uniquely sharp cut that nearly knocks the wind out of you and leaves you with a freshly open wound. So wholly original, unflinching, beautifully chilling, and singular; I’ll just be here dressing my wounds and feeling honest gratitude for the scars.
May 28, 2025
Beautifully told stories of resilient girls and women.
August 31, 2025
Phenomenal and engaging writing, I was hooked by each of the stories. The characters and storylines really resonated with me, especially in Washington Avenue and So You May Sleep Again.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews