Passion born on a raging sea
WRECKER by Noel O’Reilly (HQ €18.10)
FEISTY, defiant and ‘as proud as Satan’, Mary Blight lives in Porthmorvoren, Cornwall, where plundering wrecks is a way of life for the povertystricken villagers.
Rescuing Gideon Stone, a Methodist minister, from drowning and taking him home to nurse does nothing for Mary’s reputation.
The whispers multiply, culminating in the claim that she defiled the body of a woman washed up from a wreck, a heinous sin.
Once healed, a grateful Gideon plans to build a chapel which will help bring salvation to Porthmorvoren.
But then he finds himself torn between his God and a passion which threatens to wreck his life.
Written with a blazing energy and a Gothic edge, this portrait of 19th-century Cornwall is a cracker.
THE STORY KEEPER by Anna Mazzola (Tinder Press €22.90)
FLEEING from her father and a stepmother she dislikes, Audrey Hart accepts a position with Miss Buchanan at Lanerly Hall on the island of Skye. Her task is to record the island’s treasure trove of stories and legends.
There could be no richer hunting ground for a folklorist but, steeped in a history of oppression and dispossession, the crofters do not yield up their myths easily.
When a young girl dies, apparently one of several who have disappeared, Audrey realises another story needs to be investigated — one that, incredibly, might involve her own mother.
Skye is the best of settings for a twisty, atmospheric crime story into which is stitched the fallout from ancient grudges, superstition and oppression.
SONG by Michelle Jana Chan (Unbound €22.90 )
WHEN the floods swamp his village in China in 1878, Song abandons his family for Guiana, where he believes fortunes can be made.
Having survived a sea journey and forced labour on a plantation, Song has the luck to be taken in by an English vicar, Father Holmes, who sets about his education. Their relationship is the driver for what turns out to be a remarkable story of determination as Song, the outsider, turns his life around — but not without encountering extreme prejudice.
A strong picaresque element powers this saga of a man rising above his origins and above racism.
Its love story, its lush settings and its depiction of old British colonial misdemeanours are given additional resonance by the moral fable at its heart.