Review: Wild Dark Shore

In her remarkable novels that confront the realities of climate change and environmental destruction, Charlotte McConaghy (Migrations; Once There Were Wolves) insists on hope despite the darkness. With Wild Dark Shore, the talented Australian writer takes readers to the fictional Shearwater Island (inspired by Macquarie Island, a World Heritage Site in the subantarctic waters between Antarctica and Tasmania). Shearwater is a haunted place, recently home to a research station, a global seed vault, and the Salt family, who serve as caretakers of the island. With rising tides reclaiming the land, Shearwater has been decommissioned, and Dominic and his three children are preparing for departure when 17-year-old Fen pulls from the water a nearly-drowned woman named Rowan, "this creature carried in from a sea too vast to make sense of. A gift for them or something rejected?"

Rowan's arrival changes everything, especially coming at a moment already full of uncertainty and loss for the Salt family. As the narrative alternates between each character, it deepens and complicates the reader's understanding of what happened in the days before Rowan washed up on shore. No one is telling the truth, it seems, at least not all of it. Despite the layers of deception, Rowan and Dominic forge a tentative trust. And the children, each in their own way, share themselves with this unsought surrogate for their beloved mother, who died after complications with the birth of nine-year-old Orly. As she bonds with this unusual family, Rowan must confront her views on motherhood and sacrifice, reckoning with her past as she begins to consider alternatives to a desolate future.

Her grim assumptions are warranted in the face of fire, drought, and species loss. Even the seed vault, "meant to outlast humanity," must now accommodate the desperation of humans threatened with their own destruction. Instead, Orly, with his encyclopedic knowledge of these seeds and the life they promise, becomes the beacon of hope, the kind that might prompt more to adopt Dominic's stance: "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." Wild Dark Shore asks readers to keep making that choice, to note, as eldest child Raff does: "There is such peril in loving things at all, and... he just keeps on doing it." --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

Shelf Talker: Raising issues of love and family and sacrifice, Wild Dark Shore is a beautiful examination of hope in the face of certain destruction.

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