The Sea Child
Isabel arrives at the seaside village of Helford in Cornwall. Burdened with her dead husband’s debts and evading gossip about improper behavior, she is driven from London to the place where, at the age of four, she was found wandering fresh from the sea. Her origin is a mystery – no known shipwrecks, no reports of a missing child. Now in 1808 at the age of 23, the isolated Trevernan Cottage overlooking the confluence of Helford River and the Atlantic is exactly what she needs to start a new life. The villagers remember her, this mysterious child from the sea who they claim is the daughter of a merman, the Sea Bucca and their sea protector.
Lieutenant Sowerby, a Revenue officer, warns her of the danger of smugglers and illegal activity at night. Unconcerned, she is asleep when a group of men enter, assuming the cottage is vacant, one of them seriously wounded. Now she finds herself nursing and harboring a smuggler, the very attractive Jack. Her criminal complicity continues when she protects Jack from the overbearing Sowerby. As she finds her place in village life, Isabel is gradually pulled into the underground world of smuggling, and we learn Jack is of the nobility. She longs to go to sea by joining him on his next smuggling run, regardless of the danger. This begins a harrowing adventure.
Throughout the novel, Isabel’s special kinship with the sea is alluring and mystifying. It whispers to her, calling her home. She wonders if her father really is a “spirit of the sea, an invocation against its dangers, a creature of legend.” She does not seek her origins, but the truth of her past shadows her as it unfolds, and we learn of her connection to the sea. This adventurous novel with a touch of enchantment is also a tender love story.
