Beyond the Bright Sea
Lauren Wolk
Dutton Books
Fiction, MG Historical Fiction
Themes: Diversity, Girl Power, Plagues, Seafaring Tales, Thieves
***+
Description
Twelve-year-old Crow has lived all her life among the Elizabeth Islands off the coast of Massachusetts, but she came from the sea. The taciturn painter Osh found her, barely a few hours old, in a swamped dinghy that washed up outside his ramshackle cottage home. Though he and their nearest neighbor, Miss Maggie, love her dearly, the other islanders keep their distance. She wonders if perhaps because she looks different, her skin darker than theirs and hair curly, maybe even the birthmark on her cheek like a little feather, but that's not it... at least, not entirely. Too many suspect that she came from Penikese, where the state sent victims of the dreaded disease leprosy; though the hospital is gone, the patients dead or shipped off, and the island is now a bird sanctuary, the fear lingers. Crow herself never cared where she came from. As far as she's concerned, Osh is her father and Cuttyhunk Island her home. But then she sees the fire on the empty island across the waters, and some restless, nameless yearning wakens in her, a yearning to know who she is and why she was abandoned... and if there's anyone out there still looking for her. Though Osh warns her that sometimes it's best not to dig too deep, Crow can't help asking questions and searching - inadvertently endangering herself and the ones she loves most.
Review
There's plenty that Beyond the Bright Sea does right. It establishes a strong sense of time and place in 1920's Massachusetts, the slow and timeless life on a small Atlantic island that's so close to the bustling cities of the mainland but might as well be on another world... where few things were as feared as the different and the potentially diseased. Despite how the other islanders keep their distance, Crow couldn't be a happier child, helping her adopted father mix his paints and reap the bounties of the tides and the ocean, or learning informally from Miss Maggie (and not from the local school, which won't take her, or the library, which didn't want books she'd handled returned to their shelves out of fear she may be a carrier). Still, she's growing up and can't help but start to ask questions - questions that Osh initially tries to turn aside, as his own past is one full of traumas and loss and he's learned not to go prodding or poking, yet when he realizes she will persist with or without him he does offer his reluctant help. Crow's search leads to long-buried secrets and possible pirate treasure, as well as the tragedy of the "leper colonies". It is a long, slow, and winding search, like trudging through the soft sand above the tideline on the beach, not helped when the audiobook narrator insisted on dropping her voice and half-mumbling Osh's dialog (putting her voice right in the range of the ambient noise I work around and thus rendering a good chunk of his speech essentially inaudible to me). The story takes a while to get moving, and never quite picks up the pace, even in the active moments. There are some false starts, and a villain who pops up and never really becomes more than a cardboard caricature, then an ending that lingers a bit too long and, skirting spoilers, feels unfinished, or like a pulled punch. Still, the characters are interesting for what they are, and Cuttyhunk Island is nicely described, as is the lingering human tragedy at the heart of Crow's story.