August 02nd, 2026

​Charlotte McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore was a Bookmarks Selection in our May/June 2025 issue (click on the book cover image for the original review), and I finally had the chance to read it over the course of a few days, including a flight from San Francisco to Vancouver and a bus ride from Vancouver to Whistler. Set on a sinking island near Antarctica, the novel follows a shipwrecked woman who becomes involved with the caretakers of the world's largest seed bank on the island, a broken family wracked by trauma and grief. It took me a while to understand why, exactly, she was there. Atmospheric and thrilling, Wild Dark Shore is hauntingly beautiful and emotionally profound in its exploration of our disappearing natural world and the boundaries of human love, memory, and healing. I have recommended the novel to everyone I know and recently started Migrations, one of McConaghy's earlier novels. 

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