Wild Dark Shore

 

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Fiction/Mystery

2025

Narrated by Cooper Mortlock, Katherine Littrell, Saskia Maarleveld, Steve West

Finished on 2/11/2026

Rating: 4.5/5 (Excellent!)

Publisher's Blurb:

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.

I read Migrations in 2021 and thought it was good, but not outstanding. I wasn't inspired to try Charlotte McConaghy's next book, Once There Were Wolves, since I hadn't been impressed with her debut novel. I don't even remember hearing much about that book, but when Wild Dark Shore was released, I decided to add it to my TBR list since so many readers loved it. I went with the audiobook, which is marvelous. I love a full cast of narrators and all four did an amazing job. The dialogue and vivid descriptions of the island and animal life are well done, and I was quickly transported to Shearwater and its inhabitants. McConaghy has written a beautiful tale with complex, yet lovable characters, and a haunting mystery. It's been a long time since a book has moved me to tears.

Highly recommend!

Tilt

 

Tilt by Emma Pattee

Fiction

2025 (Due out on March 4, 2025)

Finished on October 10, 2024

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Set over the course of one day, a heart-racing debut about a woman facing the unimaginable, determined to find safety.

Last night, you and I were safe. Last night, in another universe, your father and I stood fighting in the kitchen.

Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk.

Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she’s determined to change her life.

A propulsive debut, Tilt is a primal scream of a novel about the disappointments and desires we all carry, and what each of us will do for the people we love.

Emma Pattee's slim novel is easily read in a single day. We were on our 5-week Grand Teton road trip when I picked up my ARC of Tilt, and as much as I would have liked to have read it in one fell swoop, other interests and activities begged for my attention. But even without the distractions of the beautiful scenery, hikes to stunning viewpoints, and moose encounters, I'm not sure I'd want to read this story so quickly. Pattee's prose is poetic, yet not overly so, and I found myself re-reading her beautiful passages as I held my breath in anticipation of what Annie was experiencing in Portland, Oregon.

I grew up in Central and Southern California, and while not a regular occurence, earthquakes were not completely unheard of. I remember several in which I either jumped from wherever I was sitting to run to stand in a door frame, or awoke from a deep sleep, wondering why my husband was tossing and turning so violently. There was even one instance in which I thought somebody was trying to break into our house. The front door was loudly rattling and it wasn't until I saw the light fixture swaying in the dining room (and my young daughter screaming, "Make it stop!" as she ran down the stairs from her bedroom) that I realized it was an earthquake and not an intruder. 

And yet, until my husband and I moved to the Oregon Coast, we didn't give earthquakes much thought. Like any natural disaster, you could only do so much ahead of time. We moved from San Diego to Nebraska and became very familiar with tornadoes and severe thunderstorm watches and warnings. But in Oregon, we were quickly informed of THE BIG ONE! We live on the Cascadia subduction zone, which stretches from Northern Vancouver Island to Cape Mendocino California, and will eventually wreak havoc on communities up and down the faultline, most likely with a magnitude 9.0 or greater. 

Like Annie and Dom, my husband and I have attended seminars and meetings on how to prepare for such a catastrophic earthquake. We have a "Go Bag" ready for the event in one of our cars. (Why don't we have one in both?!) We have stored gallons upon gallons of drinking water in our house and garage. We have not just two but three power stations (to recharge phones and other electronics, which will most likely not be of any use since the cell towers will be down), a gasoline generator (which is great until we run out of fuel), cash (vendors won't be able to process credit or ATM cards), and a couple of LifeStraws for water purification. There's still a lot we should/need to do, but it does get overwhelming. And, we live in a forest, surrounded by HUGE trees. Oh, and we're on the coast. We'll be lucky to survive the 100 foot tidal wave or falling trees.  

This is all to say that Tilt scared the crap out of me. Annie lost her purse in IKEA during the earthquake. She lost her phone. 

Every couple of minutes, I check my pockets for my phone. I can't help it. It's like a phantom limbl

Without a phone, I'm like an animal without legs. You have to understand about people my age is that we got phones before we had sex, we got phones before we got credit cards, before we started therapy, before we started drinking beer and cofffee and two-for-one margaritas at the shitty bar down the street. I learned to drive by following the glowing blue arrow wherever it took me.

How comforting it would be right now to trace my finger along a line of blue dots. To get an ETA. Something to press on, a screen to light up. To feel that I am connected to someone, somewhere, not just a lone body miles from home, jerking forward step by step under the sun.

Even if she had a "Go Bag" with water and food in her car, she wouldn't be able to retrieve it from the crushed vehicle. Annie encounters impassable roads and bridges. There are two bridges between us and the two closest towns. Those will be gone. We'll be stranded for weeks, if not months, before help arrives. Or I may be in town shopping and have to walk home to my family, just as Annie attempts to do, hoping to reunite with her husband. 

The last known megathrust earthquake in the northwest was in January, 1700, just over 300 years ago. Geological evidence indicates that such great earthquakes have occurred at least seven times in the last 3,500 years, a return interval of 400 to 600 years. (Pacific Northwest Seismic Network)

Maybe we'll get lucky and this won't happen in our lifetime. But to quote the geologist from Annie & Dom's seminar, "The worst day to prepare for an earthquake is the day the earthquake hits." 

Tilt is an intense read. I felt anxious and worried for Annie (and her unborn child, "Bean") the entire time I was reading. This story will stay with me a long time. Emma Pattee has written an impressive debut novel. Recommend (but maybe not to my local book group).

The Light Pirate

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Fiction

2022 Grand Central Publishing

Finished on September 3, 2023

Rating: 5/5 (Outstanding)

Publisher's Blurb:

Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels gradually wreak havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker; his pregnant wife, Frida; and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds to search for them. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.

As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature.

Told in four parts—power, water, light, and time—The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness. 

Imagine a time when it is literally too hot to go outside during daylight hours. If you do, your core body temperature will rise so quickly, you will suffer from heat exhaustion within minutes and die. Nocturnal life becomes the norm for survival.

Imagine a year in which there are so many hurricanes that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) goes through the entire alphabet, only to start over again before the end of the "season."

Imagine the disappearance of Miami-Dade County, the Outer Banks, and other coastal cities, all preceded by a mass exodus of residents to safer locations where they endure perpetual wildfires in their new communities.

These calamities are not difficult to imagine. One just needs to read the news and know how close we are coming to creating the above into realities. The following  headline was published in the New York Times on Labor Day:

In a typical Atlantic Ocean hurricane season, August is the ramp-up to September’s peak. This season came to life almost overnight in mid-August, producing a record four named storms in less than 48 hours. [Emphasis mine]

I also read this in The New York Times earlier this month:

More than any past year, this summer felt like the moment that climate change came for the vacationer. It began with heat waves across Southern Europe, where popular attractions closed to avoid the intolerable midafternoon temperatures. The infernal heat cured the kindling for wildfires, which were soon raging in Italy, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Greece and elsewhere, forcing holiday cancellations and, as in the case of Rhodes, large-scale evacuations. On the other side of the world, another fire, this one likely supercharged by hurricane winds, consumed Lahaina on Maui, killing at least 115 people.

Hail as big as tennis balls pounded towns in northern Italy. Torrential rain triggered flash floods across Central Europe. All of this wild weather has coincided with tourism’s great rebound, the year when tourist numbers are expected to recover to prepandemic levels.

and

There are few contingencies in motion for when the weather in today’s most popular destinations becomes a bane rather than a blessing. Many people are speculating that European summer travel patterns are bound to migrate north as prospective vacationers deem an increasing likelihood of sustained 110-degree Fahrenheit temperatures too much to bear. Uncanny sights like the ghostly hotel towers of Varosha, a once-glamorous resort in Cyprus that was abandoned after the Turkish invasion of 1974, may become commonplace across Europe’s southern coasts.

The gravity of the climate crisis should not be lost on readers of The Light Pirate, a novel so timely and smartly written, it should be required reading not only of high school students, but all citizens of this planet. Cli-fi is a new-to-me genre, but unlike its sister Sci-fi, it's far too realistic and terrifying, the imminent threat all too near and not to be ignored. As Kirby, one of the main characters, believes:

This world is worried, of course, about climbing temperatures and vengeful wildfires and rising tides. The headlines are absolutely terrible[...]. Incessant. Exhausting. But they're just that. Headlines. Things that happen to other people, elsewhere. The Middle East, Indonesia, Northern California, the Bahamas: those poor people. Southern Florida and the Keys, Louisiana, Puerto Rico: those poor people. The safe zones have shrunk, will go on shrinking, but the people still firmly attached to the idea that there will continue to be such lines--between safe and not safe, between us and those poor people--are determined to go on as they always have.

and

By the time Kirby reaches the parking lot, he realizes that he's known for weeks. Months, even. It was the same with the beaches. The same with the floods, the hurricanes, the sea level. Didn't he know all of this was coming? Didn't everyone? They've known for years. Decades. It didn't make any difference. None at all. Because now it's here and despite all that knowing, he's lost. Everyone is. They had all hung their hats on the question of proximity. Yes, it will be bad, they said to one another, but we have years. We have time. Somehow we'll solve this along the way. He doesn't even have the energy to be angry. 

I'm not a fan of magical realism, but I was willing to suspend disbelief and just go with it. The occurences are not a distraction and, truthfully, I enjoyed those parts of the story. Don't let that label dissuade you from reading this powerful book!

Thought-provoking is a hackneyed term, but I can't think of a better descriptor for The Light Pirate. It's a gripping read from the opening lines, easing up before the halfway point, but never losing momentum or growing sluggish. I haven't read a lot of climate fiction, but Ash Davidson's debut novel, Damnation Spring (an environmental story set in the California redwood forests) came to mind as I read Brooks-Dalton's provocative, cautionary tale. 

I loved this novel, which is so beautifully written with well-drawn characters I hated to say goodbye to. I couldn't put it down! The Light Pirate is one to own, to share with others, to discuss in book groups, and to inspire all of us to do more to save our planet. Highly recommend.