Wild Dark Shores

A Novel By Charlotte McConaghy

Summary Provided by Author

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. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.

Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again.

But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all 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.

A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty, and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears.

Review & Thoughts

Trigger warnings: death, grief, near drowning experience, mentions of suicide and sexual assault.

I started this book by listening to the audiobook, which has a comprehensive cast that moves through each character’s perspectives. This book is touches so many different concepts and truly has you on the edge of your seat trying to figure out everyone’s secrets. As noted above, we start off on the island when Rowan, a mysterious woman, washes on the shore of a remote island near Antarctica. Tasked with taking care of the island and the world’s seed bank, the Salt’s are hesitant to let her in to their lives. Dominic is the single father of three children while on this island, all of whom are struggling with the grief and trauma of losing their mother. Charlotte writes a single dad’s POV phenomenally, and could picture my own husband saying the same things, or having the same mannerisms. This book is incredibly poetic, and not only focuses on the interpersonal drama on the island, but truly highlights the crime of global warming- and the toll it takes on a desolate place. The author is descriptive with the calming and violent tendencies of nature, making you feel truly grounded in the setting.

spoilers ahead….

My, god. Any time I didn’t think this book could turn darker, more emotional- it did in an astounding way. My heart was beating out of my chest the last 40% of the book. I completely loved all of the five main characters, and found myself connected to each one and their trauma in such a unique way. The pacing of this book is perfect- I would change nothing of how it builds up and how the secrets slip. Overall, so so haunting and mesmorizing. I completely recommend the audiobook AND a shelf trophy for this book!

Quotes

“But here is the nature of life. That we must love things with our whole selves, knowing they will die.”

“To live for your children seems a normal thing, a respectable one; to live because of your children is something else. Mine are the blood of me, and the oxygen in that blood, the airflow and the neurons firing and the stretch and release of muscles in limbs, they are the foundations that make up my skeleton, all the collagen and calcium upon which I stand and fall, and the pulse and the flow and the beat. But I think maybe this is too much for them to be. The breath of a man. The life of him. I think it is too heavy a thing for children to carry.”

“Maybe we will drown or burn or starve one day, but until then we get to choose if we’ll add to that destruction or if we will care for each other.”

“But the dandelion—this single flower that has given nourishment to countless other living creatures—is considered a weed.”

“I think, deep in the darkest hours, that even if she survives this night that ocean will have her back one day.”

“I remember a morning, one of many that all bleed together in my mind. A morning I rose, shattered by grief and weariness, stumbling into our living room in the city. I remember wondering why I could hear no crying, no morning calls for a bottle, and then seeing my son on his back in a shaft of sunlight, with the small lean bodies of my older children laid around him, I remember their fingers tickling his belly and his smile, his first smile. They looked up at me with such awe, such delight. A smile, Dad! He's smiling! And I thought, this is why we survive.”

“But what is the use of safety if it deprives you of everything else?”

“Maybe it is not unlikely at all. Where men go there is harm.”