Wild Dark Shore
On a remote island near Antarctica, Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of the seed bank designed to safeguard the food supply and flora diversity in the event of disaster. But as the climate crisis reaches its peak, even the safeguard isn’t safe, and they are tasked with packing up the seeds for relocation. In the midst of this, a woman washes ashore. Even as Dom and Rowan keep secrets, they are drawn to one another, and as Rowan gets closer to him and the kids, she needs to decide if she can trust them enough to grow something new.
Charlotte McConaghy writes incredible eco-fiction, and her last novel, Once There Were Wolves is one of my favorites. I loved this one just as much. The fictional Shearwater Island lends its voice between the lines, through the ghosts of deceased characters and devastated animal inhabitants (based on the history of the real Macquarie Island, where seals and penguins were hunted to near-extinction), adding a mystical tone to the themes of isolation, grief, and ecological destruction.
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Publisher’s Description
A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.
Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.