"Joyce Perlman is aimless and drifting after high school in a Miami suburb. By chance one night she meets a Greek merchant marine named Nikos, and for the first time realizes she "doesn't want to be a virgin anymore." Against her parents' wishes, they marry, and he takes her back to his home on a remote Greek island. There he leaves her, rarely returning, for over two years.

Joyce finds herself living the merciless life of a Greek peasant woman, at the command of people steeped in religion, misogyny, superstition, and their experience of war.".

"Yet, she loves it. For the first time in her life, she feels she has a purpose. Then she meets Alex, a young Englishman with family on the island, and is forced to come to grips with everything she's turned her back on: modernity, education, freedom, and passion. The Sailor's Wife is an examination fo the nature of freedom, and the struggle to balance duty and love."--BOOK JACKET.