Moore’s fantasy novel offers a multigenerational tale of love and destiny interwoven with selkie folklore.

In 1969 New Jersey, an orphaned 14-year-old boy named Silas discovers he is a selkie, capable of shapeshifting between human and seal forms; he disappears into the ocean, embracing oblivion and hoping to evade the grief over his mother’s recent death. But the human world keeps calling to Silas, and a few years later, he comes ashore and fathers a girl named Alise. In 1993 North Carolina, Alise is a young, morose camp counselor with an affinity for the sea and a yearning for something she can’t name (“Being by the sea was simply a relief from the faint but persistent sense of wrongness that she felt everywhere else”). When Alise finds a sealskin (secretly left by Silas in a place she can find it), she intuitively knows it to be hers and begins to study selkie lore to understand herself better. Unbeknownst to Alise, her friend, Elliot, suspects her true nature and uses this knowledge to manipulate her into a romantic relationship. When she is finally able to break free, Alise finds true love and gives birth to a daughter named Ellie. But Elliot’s obsession does not dim with time, leading to tragic consequences. Ellie grows up not knowing she is a selkie until she meets a distant relative in Scotland in 2014 who tells her a sobering truth: Ellie has a death sentence hanging above her head. Moore has crafted a sweeping narrative that delves into the lives of three generations of selkies, exploring themes of identity, love, and loss. The characters’ struggles to navigate their different selves—from Silas’ conflict between the human world and his life as a seal to Alise’s trials as she faces a dangerous stalker to Ellie’s race to become whole—culminate in an emotionally charged, beautifully told, and ultimately fulfilling tale.

An engrossing novel that seamlessly weaves together elements of romance and folklore.