WILD DARK SHORE – Charlotte McConaghy

Posted byTommi PowellPosted inUncategorizedTags:, , , , , , , , ,

“I loved a landscape and watched it burn.”

I really enjoyed Charlotte McConaghy’s Once There Were Wolves (2021), and Migrations (2020) has been sitting on my TBR cart for years, so picking Wild Dark Shore ( Flatiron Books 2025) as my BOTM selection was a no brainer.  I was a bit concerned that it would fall into the “trauma porn” category that I found Once There Were Wolves teetering into (not my fav), but I think WDS delicately dances around it a bit more, resulting in that five-star read I wouldn’t give Once There Were Wolves.

The page count of 298 is misleading; this is an extremely short novel, rapidly propelled forward by short sections. I read it in one sitting before bed, and yes, I did cry.  The part that was my undoing?

“I will go back with your body now. This beautiful body. This strong body that endured all it could. I will stay with it, I will wash it and wrap it and hold it as we leave this place. I will carry it across the sea, and I will return it to your land, to live among the snow gums. It is just a body but it was yours, and beloved.”

Now, I’m not going to tell you who was speaking or who they were talking about, because I’m not spoiling this novel.  But people die.

This is the novel of the Salt family, Dominic and his three children, Fen, Raffy, and Orly. They are all that remain on what had once been a research island that houses a seed vault. The researchers have left and Dominic, as caretaker, is tasked with packing up the seeds to be moved. The sea is reclaiming the land, and it is no longer safe. One night, a body catches Fen’s eye.  It’s breathing.  They pull Rowan from the sea, and the four become five. But Rowan has a secret – she’s there looking for her researcher husband. The Salts have their own secrets, including what happened to her husband.

The island teems with wildlife, a history of poaching a trauma that still soaks the land. The Salts all have their own relationships to the island – some with the animals, some with the seeds, and some with the ghosts that inhabit its shores. It’s an island of skeletons and secrets, blood and bonds, lies and loyalties. Rowan, despite her attempts not to, develops her own relationship with the island.  And the Salts.

It’s a novel of motherhood and choices, mistakes, misunderstandings, and forgiveness. Of turning trauma into something still broken but beautiful. And that ending, while many will hate it, is perfection.  Because a choice has to be made, and that choice both shatters and heals.

Read this book.

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