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WORK TITLE: Wild Dark Shore
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.charlottemcconaghy.com/
CITY: Sydney
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COUNTRY: Australia
NATIONALITY:
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PERSONAL
Children: two.
EDUCATION:Australian Film Television and Radio School, master’s degree.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
WRITINGS
Also author of the novel, The Shadows, 2012.
SIDELIGHTS
Charlotte McConaghy is an Australian screenwriter and writer of novels and young adult novels. She first gained attention as a young adult novelist with her “Cure” and “The Chronicles of Kaya” series before she turned to writing adult literary fiction. In an interview in the Brooklyn.the.bookworm blog, McConaghy talked about her writing routine. She shared that “a day for me tends to look like waking up and inputting for a few hours. I call it inputting and outputting – you can’t output (‘writing’) without inputting (‘feeding the creative energy’). For me this looks like reading or walking or watching something. Then once I feel inspired, or in the right creative mood, I’ll sit down to write, and work through the afternoon and evening. I used to be a real night owl, and would write late into the night, but these days I try to spend my evenings with my partner, or we’d never have any time together.”
In the novel Migrations, Franny Stone follows the trail of a group of endangered Arctic terns as they migrate home. This was in response to the many troubles in her life. She choked her husband during a sleepwalking incident and still mourns the death of her stillborn baby. Franny’s sense of wanderlust becomes an excuse for her to get away, and she joins a fishing boat to follow the terns while promising them she can help them find more fish.
A contributor to Publishers Weekly lauded that “lovers of ornithology and intense drama will find what they need in this uneven tale.” Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Michael Christie commented that “this novel’s prose soars with its transporting descriptions of the planet’s landscapes and their dwindling inhabitants, and contains many wonderful meditations on our responsibilities to our earthly housemates.” However, Christie also noted some of its “flaws,” saying that “as the crew nears their destination, the plot gets jerky, at times leaning upon melodrama.” Nevertheless, Christie concluded that the novel “is a nervy and well-crafted novel, one that lingers long after its voyage is over.”
Booklist contributor Donna Seaman claimed that the author’s “evocation of a world bereft of wildlife is piercing.” Seaman also mentioned that the protagonist’s “otherworldliness is captivating, and her extreme misadventures and anguished secrets are gripping.” In a review in Washington Post Book World, Ellen Morton explained that “this is a story about grieving, an intimate tale of anguish set against the incalculable bereavements of climate change. There are many losses, but lives are also saved. Franny charts our course through a novel that is efficient and exciting, indicting but forgiving, and hard but ultimately hopeful.”
McConaghy’s novel, Once There Were Wolves, follows a woman’s efforts to repopulate Scotland’s forests with wolves. Aggie Flynn follows her biologist twin sister, Inti, from Australia to Canada and later to Scotland. Inti and her colleagues believe that reintroducing wolves to Scotland’s forests will also help reduce the rate at which they are cut down. Aggie, however, is just trying to deal with the domestic violence that plagued her marriage.
Booklist contributor Seaman insisted that this “richly plotted tale of suspense and psychological insight poses provocative questions about predators and humanity’s impact on Earth.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly noticed: “Throughout, McConaghy avoids melodrama by maintaining a cool matter-of-factness. This is a stunner.” The same reviewer also pointed out that “the bleak landscape is gorgeously rendered.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor observed: “All throughout, the language hews to the poetic.” The same critic called it “a lovely, gripping tale about a world that could be our own.”
In Wild Dark Shore, Dominic Salt has served for eight years as caretaker of Shearwater Island and the research station there that allows for scientists to study environmental change. The other scientists have left as the island rapidly sinks into the ocean, leaving Dominic seven weeks to pack up everything before the next ship comes to get him and his three kids, who are staying there with him. The arrival of a nearly dead Rowan on the island after her ship sinks perplexes Dominic. Dominic and Rowan develop feelings for each other, and Dominic’s kids grow close to her as well. Suspicions mount, though, as secrets arise.
A contributor to Publishers Weekly suggested that “readers of climate fiction ought to check this out.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor claimed that “McConaghy writes about both nature and human frailty with eloquent generosity,” appending that “readers won’t want to leave behind the imagined world of pain and beauty that McConaghy has conjured.” Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Matt Bell observed that “in Wild Dark Shore, we’re shown why a person might withdraw from the messiness of life after tragedy and trauma…. The novel also offers its injured characters a path back to connection and community, a risk McConaghy argues must be worth taking, no matter how fraught the future, no matter how temporary the family.”
In a review in Washington Post Book World, Porter Shreve reasoned that “McConaghy keeps the novel moving at a blustery pace, thanks to her deft plotting and shared point of view. We get all five perspectives, some in first person, some in third, mostly in short chapters titled with the name of whomever we’ll briefly follow. This allows us to see all the characters as full-fledged individuals, with histories, fears and desires, and also as a community, to learn what secrets each is keeping and why.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2020, Donna Seaman, review of Migrations, p. 36; July 1, 2021, Donna Seaman, review of Once There Were Wolves, p. 24.
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2021, review of Once There Were Wolves; January 15, 2025, review of Wild Dark Shore.
New York Times Book Review, September 13, 2020, Michael Christie, review of Migrations, p. 11L; March 30, 2025, Matt Bell, review of Wild Dark Shore, p. 20.
Publishers Weekly, June 15, 2020, review of Migrations, p. 34; June 28, 2021, review of Once There Were Wolves, p. 41; January 6, 2025, review of Wild Dark Shore, p. 49.
Washington Post Book World, August 11, 2020, Ellen Morton, review of Migrations; March 7, 2025, Porter Shreve, review of Wild Dark Shore.
ONLINE
American Booksellers Association website, https://www.bookweb.org/ (March 5, 2025), Zoe Perzo, author interview.
Brooklyn.the.bookworm, https://brooklynthebookworm.wordpress.com/ (August 21, 2020), author interview.
Charlotte McConaghy website, https://www.charlottemcconaghy.com (June 22, 2025).
EcoLit Books, https://ecolitbooks.com/ (August 3, 2021), Midge Raymond, author interview.
Libro.FM website, https://blog.libro.fm/ (November 5, 2020), Kelsey Norris, author interview.
Charlotte is an Australian author living in Sydney with her partner and two children.
She has a Masters Degree in Screenwriting from the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and a number of published SFF works in Australia.
Her novel MIGRATIONS was her first foray into adult literary fiction, published in North America by Flatiron Books, and by Penguin Random House in Australia and the UK. It is being translated into over 25 languages, and adapted to film.
ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES, the New York Times Bestseller, is a romantic mystery about a biologist charged with reintroducing wolves to the Scottish Highlands in order to rewild the landscape and bring a forest back to life.
Her forthcoming third novel WILD DARK SHORE continues her love of romantic thrillers set in beautiful, remote places, and explores not only what it takes to raise children in a collapsing world, but the impossible choices we make to protect those we love.
Due out March 2025.
Author Interview: Charlotte McConaghy
Updated on November 5, 2020 by Kelsey Norris
For fans of Flight Behavior and Station Eleven, Migrations is a novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world’s last birds—and her own final chance for redemption. We spoke with author Charlotte McConaghy about the inspiration for the novel, the audiobook narrator’s masterful accent work, and more.
“There is something haunting in this story, something unforgettable. This comes from the beauty of the language in opposition to the stark realities of a world where so much of what we love is simply gone. Franny speaks for many of us. What might we do to escape our past? And, more importantly, can we find a way to keep love alive in the face of tragedy?”
Sarah, Loganberry Books
Please tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write this book and how this story took shape for you.
Migrations is a novel that came to me in so many different pieces from all kinds of directions that it’s difficult for me to identify what the first little nugget was. I think it’s a book that in some ways has lived in me for a long time—maybe always. But I know I became conscious of a lot of the pieces when I went traveling around the UK, I wanted to explore Ireland and get to know the land my ancestors were from as I’ve always had a fascination for it. So part of the book takes place here. And I also went to Iceland—an extraordinary place—and I was spotting these beautiful geese called graylag geese, which got me thinking about migratory birds and the incredible journeys they take, and the type of people that study these birds.
I think that’s how the story of an ornithologist who decides to chase the last flock of Arctic terns from one end of the earth to the other came about. And of course it’s my distress over the climate crisis that inspired the setting for the novel—which takes place a stone’s throw into the future during the peak of the extinction crisis, when all the animals are extinct or the last of their kind.
Have you listened to your own audiobook? If so, what struck you about the narration?
I was amazed at the narrator’s ability to do all the various accents in the book! I don’t think I even realized how many there were until I heard her skillful renditions of each.
Are you an audiobook listener? If so, what are some of your favorite audiobooks?
I’m actually not, I’m afraid, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to explore for a while now.
What have independent bookstores and/or booksellers meant to you personally and professionally?
I’ve been absolutely blown away by the passion and generosity of independent bookstores and booksellers. Honestly I feel so privileged to have received their endorsements and to see the amazing way they connect with literature and readers. We authors would be nowhere without them, and I cannot express how grateful I am. And not only as an author with a book coming out, but as a reader, who, over the years, has had countless recommendations for things I love and that I might never have picked up otherwise.
Header photo by Emma Daniels
August 21, 2020BookishBrooklyn
Author Interview: Charlotte McConaghy
A huge thank you to Penguin Random House Australia for allowing me to host an interview with Charlotte McConaghy and of course to Charlotte herself for answering these questions! I absolutely loved The Last Migration and completely recommend that you add the amazing, evocative book to your Goodreads TBR!
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42121525-migrations
Author Photo Supplied by Penguin Random House Australia, copyright Emma Daniels.
Throughout The Last Migration, the time jumps which weave the story back forth between the past and present with the main character are so perfectly executed and just add even more emotion to the depths of the story!
So, bearing that in mind…I’d love to know how you really got into that mindset to write so brilliantly in both the past settings and present?
Did you write the scenes set in the past before what happened in the present?
Charlotte: “I actually wrote the scenes of the book in the exact order you read them. For me moving between timelines is a natural space to work in, I tend to move when the rhythm feels right to me, choosing to focus on moments of change or learning in either timeline, and using a kind of instinctive pacing. I’m used to writing this way because all of my early work – my YA fantasy and sci-fi books – play with non linear structure like this, whether it was using multiple points of view or multiple timelines – so I’ve sort of gotten used to moving around, and find the thought of writing something with one POV and one timeline more difficult than allowing myself the space to explore.
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Using those multiple timelines is also a good way of creating tension for your main character; you can clearly show who she is before and after certain mysterious events and then build up to the reveals of information, which can be cathartic for readers. Plus, I really liked being able to go back and experience the big moments of Franny’s life with her, on an intimate level. I think it allows for a deeper connection with her.“
Can you tell me about the inspiration behind the eclectic group of crew that Franny finds herself with on her quest to follow the Artic Terns? Each character is written completely vividly, it was great getting to learn about them through Franny’s eyes and seeing how everyone reacted to their new crew member!
Charlotte: “I had a lot of fun with the crewmembers. I made a mind map with pictures of their faces and what they did on the boat. They started as an exercise in quirkiness – who were the craziest characters I could think of, with strange or unexpected backstories or weird personal traits? I wanted them to bring life to the book, oddities and laughter. I did a lot of reading about people who choose a life on boats and took some inspiration from them. Then I started to deepen these characters by looking at how they engaged with the world around them, and the other characters, what they believed about the world and why, and where there might be conflict between them. They also started coming more to life when I looked at how they might represent a different way of thinking to Franny, and how they might be an ally or a source of conflict for her. It was important that they all challenge her in some way, and breathe new life into her.“
When I first started reading The Last Migration, I was completely mesmerised right from the first sentence! You write in such a completely breathtaking and awe-inspiring manner and I was completely in admiration of Franny’s determination and utmost passion to follow in this quest! I’d love to know if you could tell me what was the inspiration for penning such a beautiful novel?
Charlotte: “Thank you so much, that’s so kind of you. Toni Morrison said ‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.’ And this book was like that for me. It just felt necessary for me to engage with this climate crisis in a personal, intimate way, to write about something that’s breaking my heart. For me, when I write, the main priority is to move a reader, to make them feel something, to connect with them, and I think that happens when you can write from an honest and intimate place. And I think it’s true that we’re all starting to feel the loss of our natural world in a viscerally painful way. We’re connected by it. But I didn’t know quite how to engage with that, not at first.
First I went travelling. I wanted to explore Ireland and get to know the land my ancestors were from as I’ve always had a fascination for it. I also went to Iceland, an extraordinary place, and saw the beautiful graylag geese, which got me thinking about migratory birds and the incredible journeys they take, and the type of people that study these birds. I think that’s how the story of an ornithologist who decides to chase the last flock of Arctic terns from one end of the earth to the other came about.
So it was Franny who came first, it’s always character first for me. And as I got to know her, and understand this journey she was on, and why, I started to realise the kind of world I needed to place her in to really be able to tell her story with impact, and to I guess safely engage with my own fear around the climate crisis. So that’s how the environmental side of this book got slowly drawn in – to support her. And the truth is that the more I wrote about it, the more I explored it, the more concerned I became.“
In turn, I’d love to know about some early bookish memories! Have you always been a reader? Can you recall the book (or books) that instigated the eternal love of the written word?
Charlotte: “I have always been a huge reader. I used to really love fantasy and sci-fi books when I was a kid (and still do, on occasion) and I remember reading one book by an English author called Guy Gavriel Kay called The Summer Tree. I loved this series so much because it made me feel so deeply – I sobbed for days when my favourite character died – and it stirred in me the desire to write my own stories, ones that I hoped would move people in the same way I had been moved. I’m a huge fan of all of his stuff, and as a pre-teen also really loved Isobelle Carmody and Melina Marchetta.”
I know with Lockdown and the Coronavirus Pandemic, everyone’s traditional routines have pretty much been thrown askew, but can you talk us through what a day in the life of Charlotte McConaghy looks like? Do you have a set writing routine you like to abide to?
Charlotte: “This will sound crazy but to be honest my day-to-day life is mostly unchanged. Because I already worked from home, nothing has changed in that regard… Obviously during the heavier initial lockdown there was no social contact or exercise routines, and that was challenging, but I’ve been a lot luckier than some throughout all of this. So a day for me tends to look like waking up and inputting for a few hours. I call it inputting and outputting – you can’t output (‘writing’) without inputting (‘feeding the creative energy’). For me this looks like reading or walking or watching something. Then once I feel inspired, or in the right creative mood, I’ll sit down to write, and work through the afternoon and evening. I used to be a real night owl, and would write late into the night, but these days I try to spend my evenings with my partner, or we’d never have any time together.”
It always intrigues and fascinates me to know what Authors enjoy reading, so I’d love to know what books you’ve enjoyed lately? Have there been any amazing standout reads that you’d recommend? What are you looking forward to reading? Do you find that you favour one specific genre or do you enjoy reading across multiple?
Charlotte: “I think I mostly read fiction these days, and maybe that’s why I write fiction – I think you always need to read heavily in the genre you write. I’ve loved Daisy Johnson’s book ‘Everything Under’ and am really excited for the release of her second novel, ‘Sisters’. I loved ‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers – you will never look at trees the same way again. I really enjoy Emily St. John Mandel’s books, ‘Station Eleven’ and ‘The Glass Hotel’. I’m currently reading ‘Ghost Species’ by James Bradley and ‘A Children’s Bible’ by Lydia Millet, which are really interesting – and very different – novels about climate change and the impacts of this on the world.”
To close, can you give us a tease as to what’s next for you?
Charlotte: “I’ve spent the last year and a half writing and editing my second literary fiction novel. It’s called ‘Creatures, All’, and it’s the story of a wolf biologist who’s charged with reintroducing wolves into a forest in the Scottish Highlands in order to rewild the ecosystem. But of course she faces some obstacles from the very reluctant locals. It’s a love story and a mystery, and ultimately a story of the healing power of nature. Which I guess is a recurring theme for me. So that will be released in America this time next year, and hopefully here in Australia too.”
Thank you so much Charlotte, for taking the time to answer these questions! And thank you for reading, lovely readers! ☺️
Happy Reading,
Brooklyn.
Interview with author Charlotte McConaghy
August 3, 2021 by Midge Raymond
Charlotte McConaghy, an Australian writer living in Sydney, is the author of Migrations and Once There Were Wolves. Here, she chats with EcoLit Books about her new novel about the reintroduction of wolves to the Scottish Highlands.
Q: As with the birds in Migrations, your characters in Once There Were Wolves have a deep knowledge of the animals they study and follow. What background and/or research did you draw upon to write these characters and animals so authentically?
A: I don’t have a science background myself, so for each project it’s a matter of doing a deep dive into the research before I feel equipped to begin the writing process. For Wolves, I read at great length about the biologists who took on the enormously difficult task of reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone. From their accounts of those trials I learned so much about the process and the animals themselves, and took so much inspiration from the conservationists doing such important work around the world. Their stories really brought the wolves to life for me, and made me aware that each of them has their own personality, their own mysteries to fall in love with.
Q: Inti has a rare affliction called “mirror-touch synesthesia” — what inspired this as you developed Inti as a character?
A: I have a much milder form of synesthesia myself, which means my memory only works by linking words, numbers, or sounds to color, shape, and texture. So I was already aware of having a slightly different way of thinking when I first learned about mirror-touch. It’s such an extraordinary condition, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and about how it creates the most extreme form of empathy a human can experience. Physically feeling what someone else feels… I can imagine it would be a profound intimacy and a terrible burden both. And I think this is really what Wolves is about — empathy and its absence — so to have Inti challenged by her own complex relationship to empathy seemed like the perfect way to explore that thematic within the book.
Q: The human characters and their relationships in the novel are as complex as those of the wolves — did you create the human and wolf characters with any parallels in mind?
A: I don’t think I intentionally set out to parallel them, but I tend to instinctively look for echoes and links within a story, and so it felt natural to give the wolves lives that Inti could directly relate to, could feel particularly moved by, such as a wolf protecting her sister’s pack, or the mother raising her cubs alone.
Q: In addition to showing all the nuances of wild wolves as they make their way in a new environment, you’ve also effectively shown the locals’ opposition to them in an authentic and realistic way. What research or background helped you portray this point of view?
A: This was probably my biggest challenge, as it’s a point of view I didn’t fundamentally share. I’m obviously a huge supporter of rewilding and conservation efforts, and I genuinely love wolves as I love all animals, but I didn’t want to write a book that felt like a lecture; I think my intention when writing about nature and climate change is to encourage the spirit of coming together, rather than division. So I needed to understand the opposition to my own way of thinking. Firstly I spoke to the farmers I know personally — both friends and family; my father is a sheep and cattle farmer in Australia — to get their opinions on hypothetical predators being introduced near their land, and what their fears and concerns might be. Then I did a lot of reading on specific rewilding projects and the incredible opposition they faced from the locals. I found interviews with farmers in the Scottish Highlands about their opinions on wolves potentially being brought back, and that gave me important insight into my own characters. I think what was most helpful, however, was discovering stories of conservationists who’d found ways to work with farmers instead of against them, both able to understand each other’s point of view and working towards the rejuvenation of land that would benefit all.
Q: While many aspects of novel — among them endangered animals, human and animal abuse — are dark, the story also carries tremendous hope. How do you weigh and balance this as you write? Do you have the audience in mind, or is it more about your own world view?
A: There are very dark moments in this novel, and I think that’s because I wrote it from an initial place of rage. Everywhere I looked I could see humans causing harm to both the natural world and to each other, and I didn’t understand it, and I’d had enough. But a book cannot be one thing. It has to be a movement, a transformation. So the story became about a woman who’d lost her ability to trust, to see the best in people, a woman defined by her rage, who would need to be challenged by nature and by those she loved to heal. To move beyond that rage. To find a way into something gentler. As she rewilded the landscape, she had to be open to rewilding herself. And so this became my path, too. A way of writing out of despair, away from anger and into hope. I never want to leave readers feeling worse about the world than when they start a book, so I will always find my way to hope, and that’s very important to me, otherwise I don’t think there’d be much point in writing at all. So I think it’s a bit of both — it’s my own world view and it’s for the audience, too.
Q: Like Migrations, Once There Were Wolves challenges us as readers to protect what we’re in danger of losing. Has your writing always had a focus on animals and the natural world?
A: No, this is a more recent exploration for me (recent being the last seven or so years). I grew up wanting to write as escapism, as fantasy, as a way to have adventures without having to leave the safety of my bedroom. It wasn’t until Migrations that I started to feel very connected to and inspired by the natural world around me — and that’s something I don’t think will change. I feel an urgency to, as you say, protect what we’re in danger of losing, and the idea of that can sometimes be overwhelming; it’s hard to know what to do, what one person possibly can do in the face of such a huge problem. The only thing I know how to do is write, and I hope that in doing so I can connect with readers who feel as passionately as I do.
Midge Raymond
Midge Raymond is a co-founder of Ashland Creek Press. She is the author of the novels Floreana and My Last Continent, the award-winning short story collection Forgetting English, and, with John Yunker, the suspense novel Devils Island.
A Q&A with Charlotte McConaghy, Author of March Indie Next List Top Pick “Wild Dark Shore”
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Mar
05
2025
Indie Next List Interview
A Q&A with Charlotte McConaghy, Author of March Indie Next List Top Pick “Wild Dark Shore”
By Zoe Perzo
Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version
Independent booksellers across the country have chosen Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore (Flatiron Books) as their top pick for the March 2025 Indie Next List.
Wild Dark Shore follows Dominic Salt and his three children, caretakers of the tiny island, Shearwater. But as climate change forces them to pack up and prepare to evacuate, a terrible storm washes a mysterious woman ashore.
“An achingly beautiful novel, a page-turning thriller, and an ode to the landscapes disappearing before our eyes. It so perfectly captures the deep heartbreak of loving a place in your very bones and knowing there is nothing you can do to save it. Still, the book was full of hope,” said Nina Lundstrom of Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Colorado.
Here, McConaghy discusses her work with Bookselling This Week.
Bookselling This Week: Remote locations always make for such amazing settings, and immediately add atmosphere to any story. But Shearwater is inspired by a real place, and if I recall correctly, you visited Macquarie Island as research for this title. Would you tell us a little about choosing this setting? What about Macquarie inspired you, and how did you develop that inspiration into what we see of Shearwater?
Charlotte McConaghy: I had known about Macquarie for a long while before this book, as I have scientist friends who have worked, or had the opportunity to work, down there on the research station. So I was aware that it was an amazing, remote and difficult place to visit, and always filed it away in the back of my mind as somewhere I’d like to explore as a potential setting. Then the idea of a remote seed bank containing the world’s seeds — a kind of doomsday vault — flooding from melting permafrost was inspired by the Global Seed Vault on Svalbard, and suddenly a Macquarie-inspired island felt like the perfect fit. I did travel to Macquarie on a research trip, I took my partner and one-year-old son, and it was a lifechanging experience. The island is unlike anywhere I have ever been, or will ever go again. It is rich with strange, otherworldly wildlife, the colors and textures and sounds are overwhelmingly beautiful, and there is also a sense of history there, there are remnants of the oil exploitation of the 1800s and so the island has a grim, haunted feel to it, which completely changed how I approached the tone of my novel.
BTW: Though your last several titles have been distinct stories, they all share a common thread of being immersed in nature, and the characters’ (and humanity’s) connections to it. Do you want to tell us more about this common theme?
CM: I do find myself drawn to writing about our connection to nature because we live in a time where so many of us (oftentimes myself included) are so completely disconnected from it, much to the detriment of this planet, and ourselves. I think I must write from a place of deep wish fulfilment, and fear. Each of my novels takes a look at the wildness both beyond us and within us, but they do so through a different emotional lens. Migrations came from a starting point of sadness and loss, Wolves started from a place of rage. Wild Dark Shore is about fear. Fear of how perilous the world grows, fear of the future we are facing, fear of the life we are leaving to our children, and how we are going to keep them safe. Ultimately, I think it’s an exploration of how we love in the face of this fear, in the face of loss. And the great thing about starting out from these difficult emotional spaces is that I get to then write through them and into their opposites, I’m able to find an immense amount of catharsis for my characters and for myself, and I hope the readers too.
BTW: These past few years, you’ve given us several titles with mystery, suspense, and some romance! What’s next for you?
CM: Probably more of the same! Ha! I can’t imagine ever wanting to write a book that doesn’t have mystery, suspense or romance — those are cornerstones for me. But what form it will take is what I’m currently exploring. I have a big idea, it’s an ambitious project that will build on some of the themes I’ve explored in my other work, but in quite a different way. So watch this space.
Byline: Ellen Morton
By Charlotte McConaghy
Flatiron. 272 pp. $26.99
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Brace yourself for a book about the end of the world - but not the type with a high-octane hero saving the planet from annihilation. Charlotte McConaghy's "Migrations" offers no such easy reprieve. The beauty and the heartbreak of this novel is that it's not preposterous. It feels true and affecting, elegiac and imminent.
In a future near enough you could almost mistake it for the present, irrevocable climate change has led to mass extinction, killing most animals and driving conservationists to desperate extremes. Though she has no funding and no official standing, Franny Lynch is determined to track what's expected to be the last migration of Arctic terns from Greenland to Antarctica.
Far from her husband, Niall, a renowned ornithologist, Franny pursues the vanishing birds to feel close to him. She needs a boat to carry her, so she talks her way aboard a fishing vessel, promising that her terns will lead the crew to herring. Once underway, she weathers resentment from her shipmates and struggles with the morality of teaming up with commercial fishermen, all while concealing a checkered past with the law. When an incident on shore leave turns violent, her crew rushes to her aid and they flee together, outlaws headed for the southern oceans.
Franny has an irresistible gravitational pull. The mystery of her bleak grief draws you in. Her affinity for the natural world, especially birds, is nearly mythical. She seems heroically strong, but within her first-person narrative, we see she feels just as human and as helpless as the rest of us. As she rides out a relentless storm, she fears for the birds fighting the same elements: "If the animals have died it will not have been quietly. It will not have been without a desperate fight. If they've died, all of them, it's because we made the world impossible for them. So - for my own sanity - I release the Arctic terns from the burden of surviving what they shouldn't have to, and I bid them goodbye. Then I crawl into the bathroom to vomit."
As Franny sails south, she reaches into her past to unfold the moments that brought her here. The fractured timeline fills each chapter with suspense and surprises, parceled out so tantalizingly that it took disciplined willpower to keep from skipping down each page to see what happens. At every turn, the exhilarating events of the plot - tempests at sea! fugitives on the run! - are enriched by deep themes illustrated with broad metaphors and intricate details. Early on, Franny describes the imagined ache she feels in two toes she lost to frostbite, a phantom pain that echoes in the denial and hallucinations she experiences after a different loss.
In many ways, this is a story about grieving, an intimate tale of anguish set against the incalculable bereavements of climate change. There are many losses, but lives are also saved. Franny charts our course through a novel that is efficient and exciting, indicting but forgiving, and hard but ultimately hopeful.
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Morton is a writer in Los Angeles.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 The Washington Post
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Morton, Ellen. "Book World: In 'Migrations,' climate change takes a tern for the worse." Washington Post, 11 Aug. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A632182684/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c1a3863c. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Migrations. By Charlotte McConaghy. Aug. 2020. 272p. Flatiron, $26.99 (9781250204028).
Franny Stone cannot be contained. In a bleak near-future, she is a wanderer and a sleepwalker, a swimmer and a bird lover. Born in Australia, raised in Ireland by her mother while knowing nothing of her father, she ends up back in Australia with her paternal grandmother. Returning as an adult to Ireland, she works as a cleaner at a university, where Niall Lynch, a famous professor of ornithology, willingly succumbs to her dangerous bewitchment. Their shared ardor for the wild turns tragic as the sixth extinction accelerates. McConaghy's transfixing, gorgeously precise novel is propelled by Franny's desperate effort to follow what may be the last flock of Arctic terns on their perilous migration from Greenland, where she finesses her way onto a fishing boat, to Antarctica. Alternating chapters dart back to gather the scattered puzzle pieces of her traumatic past. The scenes on board the Saghani, with its intriguing outcast crew, are psychologically intense and physically harrowing. McConaghy's evocation of a world bereft of wildlife is piercing; Franny's otherworldliness is captivating, and her extreme misadventures and anguished secrets are gripping. Some may find this darkly enrapturing work of ecofiction too heavily plotted, but all the violence, shock, and loss Franny navigates do aptly, and unnervingly, foreshadow a possible environmental apocalypse. --Donna Seaman
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 American Library Association
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Seaman, Donna. "Migrations." Booklist, vol. 116, no. 19-20, 1 June 2020, pp. 36+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A628068785/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4d3417e3. Accessed 30 May 2025.
MIGRATIONSBy Charlotte McConaghy
''Migrations,'' the Australian young-adult writer Charlotte McConaghy's first voyage into the warming waters of literary eco-fiction, is a visceral and haunting novel that opens with the lines ''The animals are dying. Soon we will be alone here.'' It's telling that such an assertion is so readily accepted by the reader -- that the near-total collapse of animal life on the planet is met with merely a solemn nod and an eagerness to get on with the story.
We meet Franny Stone, a detached and mysteriously damaged woman who has traveled to Greenland to electronically tag what might be the last remaining colony of arctic terns before they embark upon the ''longest natural migration of any living creature,'' a pole-to-pole quest that will eventually land them in Antarctica.
Seeking passage on a boat to follow the birds on what could be their final migration, Franny encounters Ennis Malone, the enigmatic and tight-lipped captain of the Saghani, a purse seine herring boat. Somewhat implausibly, the captain agrees to take Franny aboard, hoping that her tracked terns will lead them to a hidden jackpot of herring. No matter the outrageous fuel costs required to make such a voyage. We're afloat in the realm of metaphor here, so to sum up: We have a mercurial and restless narrator signing on with a menacing captain who is rarely seen above deck. Ringing any bells? As well as a work of first-rate climate fiction, ''Migrations'' is also a clever reimagining of ''Moby-Dick,'' that foundational text of humankind vs. nature, of hubris vs. humility, with Franny playing Ishmael, the famously morose seafarer whose damp and drizzly soul has gone full November. Sea yarns that serve as voyages of self-discovery have been the exclusive literary domain of men for far too long, and McConaghy deserves extra credit for sounding the oceanic depths of the female soul.
Once the ship is in motion, there are some delightful flashes of camaraderie among the crew, as Franny is shown the ropes -- and knots -- of life on a purse seiner, pitched and pestered by North Atlantic storms. These workaday details are expertly rendered: Franny's hands bleed. Her blisters pop. Decks are swabbed. Occasionally McConaghy reaches back to traumatic episodes in Franny's troubled past, unspooling the details of her life with admirable artistry. She's been to jail, and the estranged husband she's left in her wake may not actually be alive. The real mystery here is not some white whale but Franny herself, with much of the novel's suspense driven by the patchiness of her testimony.
''Migrations'' is not without flaws, however. As the crew nears their destination, the plot gets jerky, at times leaning upon melodrama, and the narrative's previous vagueness about this dystopian world feels flimsy and concocted. At one point, fishing is banned worldwide by a nameless governmental body; at another, Franny is pursued by a nameless sea police force. Also, the notion that anyone in Newfoundland is ever going to hold up a sign that says ''Justice for fish, death to fishermen,'' even after the global collapse of the world's sea life, is sheer fantasy.
Still, this novel's prose soars with its transporting descriptions of the planet's landscapes and their dwindling inhabitants, and contains many wonderful meditations on our responsibilities to our earthly housemates. ''What happens when the last of the terns die?'' Franny muses. ''Nothing will ever be as brave again.''
''Migrations'' is a nervy and well-crafted novel, one that lingers long after its voyage is over. It's a story about our mingling sorrows, both personal and global, and the survivor's guilt that will be left in their wake.
Michael Christie's most recent novel is ''Greenwood.'' MIGRATIONS By Charlotte McConaghy 256 pp. Flatiron Books. $26.99.
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Christie, Michael. "Call Me Franny." The New York Times Book Review, 13 Sept. 2020, p. 11(L). Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A635263117/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=944ebce3. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Migrations
Charlotte McConaghy. Ratiron, $26.99 (272p) ISBN 978-1-250-20402-8
Young adult novelist McConaghy (the Chronicles of Kaya series) makes her adult debut with the clunky chronicle of Franny Stone, a troubled woman who follows a flock of endangered Arctic terns on what is believed to be their final migration home. Franny's mother, who vanished when Franny was seven, warned her that women in their family are unable to resist the urge to wander. While working at a university in Galway, she meets ornithologist Niall Lynch, who immediately declares they'll spend their lives together, and they implausibly marry. Unfortunately, Franny's overwhelming desire to travel, her sorrow over their stillborn daughter, and a sleepwalking episode in which she chokes Niall drive a wedge in their marriage. Niall had always longed to track the terns, and Franny does so by convincing a fishing boat captain that she can help him find fish in exchange for transportation. Despite the tagtag crew's initial distrust of Franny, she becomes part of the team. McConaghy divulges more about Franny's dark past as she writes Niall letters and reflects on their relationship, as well as the true nature of her quest. While McConaghy's plot is engaging, her writing can be a heavy-handed distraction ("out flies my soul, sucked through my pores"). Lovers of ornithology and intense drama will find what they need in this uneven tale. (Aug.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 PWxyz, LLC
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"Migrations." Publishers Weekly, vol. 267, no. 24, 15 June 2020, p. 34. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A628069283/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7da73968. Accessed 30 May 2025.
McConaghy, Charlotte ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES Flatiron Books (Fiction None) $27.99 8, 3 ISBN: 978-1-250-24414-7
One woman’s mission to rewild the forests of Scotland with wolves yields far-reaching personal consequences.
Wildness in all of its forms is the central theme of McConaghy’s second book, which circles the lives of twin sisters Inti and Aggie Flynn as Aggie trails Inti, who's a biologist, from Australia to Canada and, eventually, Scotland. Inti and her colleagues hope that reintroducing wolves to the ecosystem will promote reforestation after the lumber industry has robbed the Scottish Highlands of timber, having seen success with similar projects in Yellowstone National Park. McConaghy’s powerful debut, Migrations (2020), dealt similarly with a woman determined to preserve a valence of wildlife while struggling with the violence and isolation of such a task, and some of the same tensions prevail here, as it becomes increasingly clear that the menacing wildness of wolves often pales in comparison to the cruelties of which humans are capable. Inti and Aggie are close to the point of codependence, having moved from place to place together and survived Aggie’s struggles with domestic violence in her marriage. McConaghy cleverly withholds the details of a trauma that has left Aggie without speech while Inti’s anger at the plight of the wolves and the local people’s resistance to their rewilding carries the narrative at a breakneck pace. All throughout, the language hews to the poetic: “Tiny leaves shimmer green...the color of ripe Colmar pears, Irish pitcher apples, and the glittering mineral called uran-mica.” Inti has a tendency to overidentify with the wolves she is struggling to help, and there is no shortage of emotional and physical violence here, but the payoff is the glimpse of gentleness and humanity that we spot through Inti’s and Aggie’s eyes.
A lovely, gripping tale about a world that could be our own.
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"McConaghy, Charlotte: ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A667031535/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=149fb8c2. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Charlotte McConaghy. Flatiron, $27.99 (272p) ISBN 978-1-250-24414-7
Australian author McConaghy (Migrations) returns with a vividly realized story of trauma and the attempted "rewilding" of the Scottish Highlands. Empathetic biologist Inti Flynn, raised in part in Sydney, Australia, and in part in the woods of British Columbia, is on a project site in Scotland with a group of biologists, where she works to introduce North American wolves into the Scottish ecosystem. She has brought her mute identical twin sister, Aggie; Inti knows the source of Aggie's trauma, but the details are kept from the reader until late in the narrative. When Inti discovers the body of a man she suspects was abusive to his wife (he said she fell off of a horse; she looked like she was beaten up), and who might have been killed either by a wolf or another person, she impulsively buries the body and sets out to solve the mystery of the death, a process complicated by her sexual relationship with the local police chief, as they have a hard time trusting each other, and by an unexpected pregnancy. In a story full of subtle surprises, revolving around Aggie's painful past as well as the source of the violence on' the project site, McConaghy brings precise descriptions to the wolves--"subtly powerful, endlessly patient"--and to Inti's borderline-feral way of existing in the world. The bleak landscape is gorgeously rendered and made tense by its human and animal inhabitants, each capable of killing. Throughout, McConaghy avoids melodrama by maintaining a cool matter-of-factness. This is a stunner. (Aug.)
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"Once There Were Wolves." Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 26, 28 June 2021, p. 41. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A667715201/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a297d93d. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Once There Were Wolves. By Charlotte McConaghy. Aug. 2021. 272p. Flatiron, $27.99 (9781250244147).
"I am unlike most people," declares Inti Flynn, referring to her mirror-touch synesthesia. When she looks at another living being, she feels what they feel, from a caress to a punch, which both propels and complicates her work as a wolf biologist. Then there's her preternaturally close relationship with her twin sister, Aggie. As in her bestselling Migrations (2020), McConaghy has created an intensely driven, environmentally passionate protagonist whose struggles illuminate the marvels of the living world and the dangers of the climate-change crisis while connecting humanity's decimation of nature with violence against women. Raised in Canada and Australia, Inti is now in charge of a controversial and increasingly dangerous effort to reintroduce wolves to the ecologically impoverished Scottish Highlands. McConaghy infuses Inti's adventures with ravishing descriptions of the landscape and the "infinite mysteries of wolves," portrays wolf-fearing sheep farmers, orchestrates a knotty relationship between Inti and the police chief, and presents chilling flashbacks to the traumas that left Aggie mute and agoraphobic. McConaghy's richly plotted tale of suspense and psychological insight poses provocative questions about predators and humanity's impact on Earth. --Donna Seaman
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
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Seaman, Donna. "Once There Were Wolves." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 21, 1 July 2021, p. 24. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A669809300/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=232bda7a. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Byline: Porter Shreve
Shearwater, the fictional island where Charlotte McConaghy has set her captivating third novel, "Wild Dark Shore," is 120 square kilometers of sinking tundra in the middle of the vast southwestern Pacific Ocean, somewhere between Tasmania and Antarctica. Many thousands of miles from the nearest neighbor, it's terra firma for more than 3 million seabirds, 80,000 seals, the last remaining colony of royal penguins and one very isolated family of four.
For eight years, Dominic Salt and his children have been caretakers of this remotest of outposts, a tall, thin slip of land with an old lighthouse, field huts and a communication station. The island was the tiny research base for scientists who until recently had come to study wildlife, weather and tides. Most important, it is also home to the Shearwater Global Seed Vault, owned by the United Nations, "built to withstand anything the world could throw at it" and "meant to outlast humanity ... in the event that people should one day need to regrow from scratch the food supply that sustains us."
But the protective permafrost is thawing, "the ocean has taken great mouthfuls of the land," and storms of increasing ferocity keep coming, washing away rocks and beaches and buildings. The vault is so imperiled by flooding and microgrid collapse that Dominic is in a race against time to save the most essential seeds for relocation. The researchers have all left - or so it seems - some under unsettling circumstances, and the Salts plan to abandon the place, too, within the next six weeks.
"Wild Dark Shore" falls into a growing and welcome category of climate fiction that imagines a future not purely dystopian, not centered so much on elaborate world-building as on how human beings adapt, survive, and continue to seek beauty, solace and communion in the face of the relentless challenges of an increasingly inhospitable environment. It's unclear exactly how many years or decades from now McConaghy's story takes place. There's mention of cellphones, satellite internet and Wikipedia, and though the electricity keeps failing, heightening the plot, the world isn't yet in total collapse.
People such as the Salts offer cause for hope: Dominic, a widower raising three children and protecting the planet from future starvation with indomitable grit; Raff, 18, a boxer and musician, at once angry and tender, raw with grief over the loss of his mother and a young man he once loved; Fen, 17, who spends her days among the seals and is herself fin-footed, "like a wild animal who has stepped free of a life under water"; and Orly, 9, so beyond precocious in his knowledge of seeds and plants that he can all but see their inner lives.
Onto the scene, washing in with the tide, comes a fifth character, Rowan. Her small boat has capsized in rough seas, and deadly currents have tossed and battered her onto the sharp-toothed rocks close to shore, where Fen swims out to rescue her. She and the rest of the family nurse Rowan back to health. Who Rowan is and what she's doing here are a mystery for a while - McConaghy is a master at leaving trails of breadcrumbs for the story-hungry seabirds among us. We come to learn that she is looking for her husband, Hank, a senior botanist and research base team leader for the seed vault. He stopped replying to her attempts to reach him, and she doesn't know why or where he's gone. It turns out that Dominic and his family do.
McConaghy keeps the novel moving at a blustery pace, thanks to her deft plotting and shared point of view. We get all five perspectives, some in first person, some in third, mostly in short chapters titled with the name of whomever we'll briefly follow. This allows us to see all the characters as full-fledged individuals, with histories, fears and desires, and also as a community, to learn what secrets each is keeping and why. McConaghy's abundant gifts for character and story mask the occasional half-hearted description, as when Rowan remembers first meeting her husband: "He is neither big nor small in stature. Neat brown hair, handsome but forgettable face. Not particularly remarkable."
A few sentences like these can be forgiven within a concept and atmosphere so spellbinding. And haunting. This desolate island is full of ghosts: Dominic's late wife keeps appearing to him, her breath on his cheeks, her whisper in his ears; Orly hears the voices of seals brutally hunted over the centuries for their skins and oils; and Fen sees their specters, "flickering green lights out at sea." The researchers left traces as well, shadowy leads that Rowan must pursue. To read this exceptionally imagined, thoroughly humane novel feels like following the last people on Earth as they prepare to leave some part of their souls to the most beautiful place they'll ever know.
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Porter Shreve is the author of four novels. He directs the creative-writing program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
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Wild Dark Shore
By Charlotte McConaghy.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 The Washington Post
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Shreve, Porter. "'Wild Dark Shore' is a captivating novel set in a very remote place." Washington Post, 7 Mar. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A830031245/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cc9d5843. Accessed 30 May 2025.
In Charlotte McConaghy's novel ''Wild Dark Shore,'' the caretakers of a remote research base brave an escalating crisis.
WILD DARK SHORE, by Charlotte McConaghy
Charlotte McConaghy's third novel, ''Wild Dark Shore,'' opens vividly, with a shipwrecked woman named Rowan washing up on Shearwater, a remote island off the coast of Antarctica. She is nursed to health by the island's caretakers -- Dominic Salt and his children, Raff, Fen and Orly, the last inhabitants of an abandoned research base and seed bank -- but her unexplained arrival soon upsets the Salt family's delicate balance, which is already strained by grief amid a series of personal and professional disasters.
Dominic, his family and the precious seeds they have been safeguarding for the past eight years are meant to be retrieved by ship six weeks after Rowan's arrival, a timeline they're unable to accelerate after their radio is destroyed. As her injuries heal, Rowan pursues the secret agenda that brought her to Shearwater, while also joining the Salts in their increasingly desperate bid to secure the seed vault and the botanical diversity it preserves.
Fierce cold and wind are a constant threat, and the sea is rising so quickly that Shearwater's beaches are collapsing, endangering the native seals and penguins as well as the base's buildings. (Also, there might be ghosts.) It's a rare novel that has so many simultaneous sources of trouble, and it's to McConaghy's credit that her plot's many interlocking escalations only rarely seem forced. But even when the action veers toward the melodramatic, it feels fitting enough: Should we be surprised when a tale about family bonds and doomed love at the end of the world occasionally becomes a melodrama?
In her author's note, McConaghy recounts visiting the real-life Australian research base on Macquarie Island, a place she calls ''surely one of the most precious in the world.'' Even as she borrowed its details for her Shearwater, McConaghy says her experience on Macquarie obligated her to render ''the truth of the island's rich flora, its extraordinary wildlife and its unique climate.'' Indeed, ''Wild Dark Shore'' abounds with evocative nature writing, including precocious Orly's moving monologues about the dandelion, the buzzy burr, the dinosaur tree and other model specimens of natural resilience.
At 9, Orly has lived nearly his entire life on Shearwater; whatever future comes for the Salts and the imperiled wider world they'll soon rejoin, it's young Orly who may live to see the worst of it. Perhaps his Antarctic childhood will help him withstand the inexorable losses to come. Perhaps he'll have to remake himself in the face of grief as Rowan and his father and siblings already have. If so, he may be buoyed by his many examples of nature's perseverance, like his beloved mangrove seeds that transform as they migrate, seeking an environment where they might thrive: ''Will you change shape and put down roots?'' Orly asks. ''Or carry on in search of somewhere better?''
The Salts and Rowan cannot hope to stay on Shearwater, but where should they go, and with whom? As the climate crisis accelerates, the assurance of loss may make retreat ever more attractive, even if it costs us connection with the human and nonhuman worlds we've loved. In ''Wild Dark Shore,'' we're shown why a person might withdraw from the messiness of life after tragedy and trauma: ''It's not a good idea to fall in love,'' Rowan warns Fen, ''not with people and not with places.'' The novel also offers its injured characters a path back to connection and community, a risk McConaghy argues must be worth taking, no matter how fraught the future, no matter how temporary the family. As Rowan reflects later in the novel: ''What is the use of safety if it deprives you of everything else?''
WILD DARK SHORE | By Charlotte McConaghy | Flatiron | 302 pp. | $28.99
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Bell, Matt. "Troubled Waters." The New York Times Book Review, 30 Mar. 2025, p. 20. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A833165758/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3d9d6538. Accessed 30 May 2025.
McConaghy, Charlotte WILD DARK SHORE Flatiron Books (Fiction None) $28.99 3, 4 ISBN: 9781250827951
The reality of climate change serves as the pervasive context for this terrific thriller set on a remote island between Australia and Antarctica.
Four family members and one stranger are trapped on an island with no means of communication--what could go wrong? The setup may sound like a mix of Agatha Christie andThe Swiss Family Robinson, but Australian author McConaghy is not aiming for a cozy read. Shearwater Island--loosely based on Macquarie Island, a World Heritage Site--is a research station where scientists have been studying environmental change. For eight years, widowed Dominic Salt has been the island's caretaker, raising his three children in a paradise of abundant wildlife. But Shearwater is receding under rising seas and will soon disappear. The researchers have recently departed by ship, and in seven weeks a second ship will pick up Dominic and his kids. Meanwhile, they are packing up the seed vault built by the United Nations in case the world eventually needs "to regrow from scratch the food supply that sustains us." One day a woman, Rowan, washes ashore unconscious but alive after a storm destroys the small boat on which she was traveling. Why she's come anywhere near Shearwater is a mystery to Dominic; why the family is alone there is a mystery to her. While Rowan slowly recovers, Dominic's kids, especially 9-year-old Orly--who never knew his mother--become increasingly attached, and Rowan and Dominic fight their growing mutual attraction. But as dark secrets come to light--along with buried bodies--mutual suspicions also grow. The five characters' internal narratives reveal private fears, guilts, and hopes, but their difficulty communicating, especially to those they love, puts everyone in peril. While McConaghy keeps readers guessing which suspicions are valid, which are paranoia, and who is culpable for doing what in the face of calamity, the most critical battle turns out to be personal despair versus perseverance. McConaghy writes about both nature and human frailty with eloquent generosity.
Readers won't want to leave behind the imagined world of pain and beauty that McConaghy has conjured.
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"McConaghy, Charlotte: WILD DARK SHORE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A823102245/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=33dad601. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Wild Dark Shore
Charlotte McConaghy. Flatiron, $28.99 (320p)
ISBN 978-1-250-82795-1
Australian writer McConaghy (Migrations) depicts in this urgent if uneven saga a family's attempt to survive on a desert island in a near future ravaged by climate change. After fleeing Australia eight years earlier due to fires, floods, and other natural disasters, Dominic Salt lives with his three children on Shearwater Island, a remote former research outpost between Tasmania and Antarctica, where he tends a seed vault meant to replenish global food supplies. His wife, Claire, died before the voyage, and he still has conversations with her in his mind. During a storm, his oldest daughter, 17-year-old Fen, rescues a woman named Rowan who washes ashore following a shipwreck. Radio contact with the outside world is impossible, as all the island's communication systems have been mysteriously destroyed, and it turns out that Rowan's missing husband, Hank, was the team leader of the island's research station. McConaghy ratchets up the tension as the characters' paranoia and mutual suspicion increases and their motives are revealed, though she scuttles the momentum with predictable romantic subplots, and a late-stage plot twist strains credulity. For the most part, though, McConaghy blends entertainment with a sobering message about conservation and the impacts of geographic isolation. Readers of climate fiction ought to check this out. Agent: Sharon Pelletier, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Mar.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 PWxyz, LLC
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"Wild Dark Shore." Publishers Weekly, vol. 272, no. 2, 6 Jan. 2025, p. 49. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A828300354/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ffa0224a. Accessed 30 May 2025.