As a child, Misskaella is an awkward outsider in the village of Potshead on Rollrock Island. She discovers she has the magic to draw the human life force from the seals that congregate on the shore. The beautiful selkie women that emerge from the sealskins are irresistible to human men, and calling them out becomes adult Misskaella’s revenge for years of being shunned and ignored. The men on the island begin abandoning their wives for these breathtaking, sensual beings who are innocent of any wrongdoing—they know nothing of human ways or morals. Readers experience the weariness and bitterness and longing of Misskaella; then the absolute betrayal of an island woman whose husband and adult son take these new lovers; then the absolute desire of one of the young men—unfettered by any sense of wrongdoing because the attraction is all-consuming. Then there is the longing of the seal women, who are now raising their sons as humans on the island. They love their husbands and children, and are loved by them in return, but find it harder and harder to be separate from their sealskins and the ocean and the daughters they had to return to the sea as newborns so they wouldn’t die. Finally, there are the sons of the seal mothers, and one in particular who realizes he has to help his mother, and all the others, return to the sea because they are suffering. With each shift in point of view, author Margo Lanagan explores another dimension of desire and pain and love and longing. Her exquisitely told, mesmerizing story engages all the senses while seamlessly weaving together the fey and human worlds. (Age 14 and older)

On remote Rollrock Island, men go to sea to make their livings—and to catch their wives.

The witch Misskaella knows the way of drawing a girl from the heart of a seal, of luring the beauty out of the beast. And for a price a man may buy himself a lovely sea-wife. He may have and hold and keep her. And he will tell himself that he is her master. But from his first look into those wide, questioning, liquid eyes, he will be just as transformed as she. He will be equally ensnared. And the witch will have her true payment.

Margo Lanagan weaves an extraordinary tale of desire, despair, and transformation. With devastatingly beautiful prose, she reveals characters capable of unspeakable cruelty, but also unspoken love.