Baserat på den minsta informationen som lämnas är det svårt att vara säker. Men jag skulle gå med "Singer from the Sea" av Sherri S. Tepper.
Texten på baksidan läser
A good and proper aristocrat on the isolated, seemingly backward
planet of Haven, Genevieve has been carefully instructed in the
Covenants -- the ancient, inflexible laws governing the women of her
class. She knows what is expected of her: marriage in her mid-twenties
to a groom of her father's choosing, childbirth at age thirty. And
then soon afterwards -- as has been the lot of so many noblewomen
before her -- perhaps death.
But there is another Genevieve within who
longs to heed the call of the sea -- though she has never once seen
the vast waters that cover most of her homeworld's surface. For an
unheard voice is crying out to her across the centuries, drawing her
ever-closer to a terrible truth hidden beneath a smoke screen of
rules, tradition, and propriety. And it is Genevieve who must fulfill
a forgotten destiny -- something inborn passed for untold generations
from daughter to daughter -- or she and the entire civilization of
Haven will be swept away on a cosmic wave of oblivion.
Så boken är centralt kring en hjältinna, och havet är en integrerad del av berättelsen.
Det publicerades 1999, vilket motsvarar rätt tidsskala.
Det visas inte på listan som Micah publicerade, men det har verkligen ett citat från Ursula K. Le Guin på toppen av baksidan som läser
"Sheri S. Tepper takes the mental risks that are the lifeblood of Science Fiction and all imaginative narrative."
(Naturligtvis handlar det här om Tepper i allmänhet, inte särskilt den här boken. Sex Moon Dance som publicerades samtidigt och finns på listan har samma citat på den.)