BookLife Review: Wild Dark Shore: A Novel (Charlotte McConahy, author) by Carol O’Day

Contemporary fiction, mystery/thriller, remote island near Antarctica, climate change, shipwrecked stranger, seed bank research institute, family secrets

The Salt family members are caretakers of a remote island, lighthouse and seed bank research institute located near Antarctica. The seed bank contains samples of virtually all the species necessary to repopulate the biome and food supply in the event of a catastrophic world-wide disaster. Dominic Salt is the father of a seventeen year-old daughter, and sixteen year-old and nine year-old sons. The family has inhabited the island for 8 years following the death of their wife and mother. Initially a research team was also resident on the island, but as sea levels rose, the facility became untenable and a plan was made to transport a portion of the precious seeds to another facility and abandon the island to the elements. The island is also home to a repopulated seal population, previously vastly diminished by poachers, and an extensive multi-species penguin population.

One day an injured, shipwrecked woman, Rowan, washes up on shore. The Salt family rescues her and nurses her back to health. Rowan came to the island in search of her husband, Hank, the former head of the seed institute who had sent her three cryptic emails calling for help. Dominic advises Rowan that all of the surviving members of the research team, including Hank, departed the island weeks before her arrival. Eerily, all communications equipment was vandalized and rendered inoperable at about that time, and the island is without power for the 8 weeks remaining until the naval supply ship is expected to evacuate them from the island. Yet, mysteries abound. What happened to Hank? How did other members of the research team die? Who destroyed the communications systems? Will the scheduled evacuation ship arrive before the inhabitants of the island run out of food and fuel in the freezing climate?

Dominic is haunted by his late wife’s ghost. Raff, the 16 year-old son is grieving the suicide of his first love, Alex, a young researcher. Fen, the 17 year-old lives separately in a boat house at the shore where she nurses a trauma not disclosed until late in the novel and tends the population of seals. Orly, aged 9, is a botanist savant of sorts, deeply knowledgeable about the seeds and their global and ecological importance to the food supply. Dominic and Rowan are deeply suspicious of one another. Dominic is puzzled by the timing of Rowan’s arrival on the remote island. Rowan is suspicious of Dominic’s role in the disappearance of Hank and the research crew.

Storm after storm assaults the island, flooding the seed vault, chipping away at concrete walls, and putting one of the world’s seed banks at greater and greater risk. The uneasy fivesome arrive at a detente and work together to save the seeds in accordance with the research search teams prioritized list. Life on the island is so challenging, cold and rain, lack of power, limited resources, and attending the basic needs of survival, that progress is slow. A whale breaches and injures Raff and further injures Rowan and she must restart her recovery. Slowly Dominic and Rowan become acquainted. Rowan grows to admire Dominic’s protection and care of his family and the island, and Dominic learns of Rowan’s building and woodcrafting talents, which are akin to his own. Rowan brings a much-needed adult counterpoint to the three children, although she presents herself as someone not interested in children.

Just as Dominic and Rowan yield to their mutual attraction, secrets leak out. Rowan finds three graves on the island. She discovers bleached over blood in one of the research resident cabins and a subterranean chamber where a member of the research team is being held captive. Rowan’s trust for Dominic is fractured. A violent storm requires the family to set aside its frictions and work together to save as many seed samples as possible. The story’s ending is surprising, but fitting.

McConaghy’s novel is reminiscent of The Light Between Oceans, a historical novel about a family of lighthouse keepers on a remote island who hold and a lifelong family secret about a foundling who appeared on the shores of their island. Wild Dark Shore is a contemporary thriller in a similar setting with contemporary climate change themes at its core. Some of the plot lines in Wild Dark Shore are a bit muddy and somewhat far-fetched. In particular, the imprisonment of a member of the research team underground is extreme, though given the lack of personnel on the island and the danger presented by the offender, this plot element passes the sniff test, just. McConahy’s prose is taut, clues are sparse and move the action and the suspense forward and the characters are complex and emotionally scarred. These elements make the dark thriller sing.

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