The Selkie's Daughter
Linda Crotta Brennan
The publisher has done an unusually good job of summarizing Linda Crotta Brennan's The Selkie's Daughter, so I won't bother. Read the publisher's blurb, if you haven't done so already!
What you will perhaps not realize from the blurb is how well this book evokes Nova Scotia and the Celtic legends on which it is based. Each chapter begins with a verse of song about Neve, Finn MacCool, and the selkies. These verses are so well chosen -- when I read them, I hear them as song
I am human upon dry land.
I swim as selkie on the sea.
And when I’m far and far frae land,
My home it is in Sule Skerrie.
Sule Skerry is a real place. However, you could not get there from Nova Scotia in a few hours in a small boat, as The Selkie's Daughter implies -- it's on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Nova Scotia of The Selkie's Daughter is vivid. It's a hard land -- this past Nova Scotia. I assume that children in Nova Scotia now have cell phones and modern schools and, like all Canadians, are covered by Health Insurance. Even the selkies.
It's a beautiful story of past time and old stories that you won't find in Grimm's Fairy Tales or even, as far as I know, a Walt Disney film.
I thank NetGalley and Holiday House for an advance reader copy of The Selkie's Daughter. This review expresses my honest opinion.