On a relatively quiet afternoon at Velocity Coffee, local author Nicole Persun was working on some edits of her new book when suddenly, someone ran into the cafe and beckoned everyone outside: a pod of orcas was out frolicking in the bay.

“Everybody, including the barista, went outside, closing the shop down so that we could stand on the dock and watch the whales,” Persun recalled from her normal perch at Velocity’s coffee bar, which has a view of the Northwest Maritime Center’s boat shop and the sparkling waters of the bay in front of the white-capped Cascade Mountains.

“That’s such a uniquely Port Townsend thing,” she said. “For a shop to close down so the customers and the workers can look at whales.”

It is this uniquely Port Townsend experience—the water, the mountains, the whales and the community—that Persun tried to capture in her new book, titled “Keep Me Afloat,” released by Lake Union Publishing on March 3.

Persun, who writes under the pen name “Jennifer Gold,” grew up in Port Townsend and has always used her surrounding environment to inspire her writing. Her last book, “Ingredients of Us,” which was published last year, featured recipes she had perfected while working as a baker at Farm’s Reach Cafe in Chimacum. And the series of fantasy novels she published as a high schooler at Jefferson Community School draw inspiration from the wild natural beauty of Western Washington. But her newest novel is the first time she has tried to encapsulate her hometown of Port Townsend for the book’s setting.

“Keep Me Afloat” follows the life of Abby, a young marine biologist, who, after making a seemingly unforgivable mistake, leaves Port Townsend to pursue her career. But after some complications to her “new start” plan, she finds herself back in her hometown working for a whale-watching company surrounded by people she grew up with but hasn’t seen in many years.

“When she returns to town, she’s trying to atone for the mistakes she’s made,” Persun said. The book has themes of forgiveness and reinvention, but it also includes fictionalized versions of Port Townsend businesses, like Puget Sound Express, and local coffee shops, like Velocity, where Persun often spends time editing her work. (Her writing, she adds, typically takes place at her home in Quilcene, during the early hours accompanied by a cup of coffee and a cat curled up by her side.)

The main character of the book finds herself stopping by the local coffee shop before heading out on a boat, an experience with which Port Townsendites might easily identify.

“It’s definitely inspired by this place,” she said. “All the coffee shops in town are such community-oriented places. People are gathering with friends, having business meetings or working on their laptops. The coffee shop in the book definitely has that feel to it.”

But crafting a fictional story about love, tragedy and growth that is set in her own hometown did not come without its challenges for Persun.

“I thought writing a book about town would be easy because I grew up here,” she said. “But it’s actually incredibly challenging because you want to instill the place with authenticity.”

Knowing it’s impossible to write a fictional story and keep the setting entirely true to life, Persun focused on keeping the community-feeling authentic, while taking fictional liberties to reimagine the places she holds dear.

The process started with renaming the places that inspired her, like Velocity, and eventually led to reimagining them entirely. The coffee shop in the book is called “Energy Coffee.” It looks and feels different than any of the existing coffee shops in town. But to keep the authenticity of the place by which she was inspired, the cafe still has the same community vibe that locals experience when they get coffee in Port Townsend. It is a place where people come to share information, to warm up from the biting wind or to work on their creative projects.

“It’s the feeling of community that’s an important player,” she said. “But everything in the book is fiction.”

Beyond exploring the fictionalization of a real place, the novel was a chance for Persun to explore her own love of marine biology.

She had already begun to craft the novel when news broke that the orca whale J35 was carrying around her dead calf, raising awareness of the plight of Puget Sound’s Southern Resident orcas, many of whom are starving from lack of salmon.

For Persun, crafting a main character who is a marine biologist and later in the book works for a whale-watching company was a chance to highlight some of the important work being done to protect and conserve the ocean and life in it.

“When I was younger I wanted to be a marine biologist,” she said. “I’ve always had a passion and appreciation for the local marine habitats. This book was a cathartic way to put all my intent somewhere. It was an outlet for me to focus that energy.”

She hopes that the setting of beautiful Port Townsend combined with the focus on conservation of marine environments will entice local readers to pick up her book. But more importantly, she hopes she can share our slice of the world with a larger audience.

“I have a lot of early readers all over the country,” she said. “Many had no idea it was such a dynamic, beautiful place.”

Hoping to do more than just raise awareness, for the first three months of her book sales, Persun is pledging 30% of the proceeds to environmental nonprofits.

“We have the most-studied population of whales in the entire world,” she said. “This is a significant place. I’m hoping to create some awareness and inspire people to make changes in their lives to benefit the environment.”

The book is the second novel Persun has published under her contract with Lake Union, but she is always working on more and has a new book in the works. Since breaking off from her time writing fantasy novels, she has begun to focus on writing stories that show a woman’s emotional journey, through family drama, love, loss of love and getting second chances.

“People have baggage and I’m endlessly fascinated by that,” Persun said.

The book “explores the heartache of stifling self to put family first,” wrote author Barbara Claypole White in her review of the novel, which is available to buy online and at Imprint Books in Port Townsend. Most of all, Claypole White said, it is “a stunning novel of love, redemption and whales.”