The Fishermans Gift

 By: Julia Kelly

Location: FIC KEL

Genre: Historical Fiction

A character driven debut that takes a deep dive into difficult topics. 💔

Enthralling, touching and inspiring, this impressive historical fiction debut has a touch of magical realism and explores grief, healing, immorality, redemption and second chances.

The Light Between Oceans meets The Snow Child in this novel set in a Scottish village in the weeks after a young boy mysteriously washes up on shore, causing the buried secrets of the insular community to come to light and rekindling an old love story.

It’s 1900 and Skerry, a small Scottish fishing village, is destined for an unyielding winter. During a storm, a young boy washes up on the shore. He bears an uncanny resemblance to teacher Dorothy’s son, lost to the sea at the same age many years before, his body never found.

The village is soon snowed in, and Dorothy agrees to look after the child until they can uncover the mystery of his origins. But over time, the lines between reality and desperate hope start to blur as the boy reminds Dorothy more and more of her own lost child.

The boy’s arrival also finally forces Dorothy to face the truth about her brief but passionate love affair with Joseph, the fisherman who found the boy on the shore and who has been the subject of whispers connecting him to the drowning of Dorothy’s son years earlier.

As the past rises to meet the present, long-buried secrets are unearthed within this tight-knit community, and the child’s arrival becomes a catalyst for something far greater than any of them could imagine.

Review by Krystal

A character driven debut that takes a deep dive into difficult topics. 💔

In 1900 a young boy washes ashore in a close knit Scottish fishing village. The young survivor’s sudden appearance brings the past to the surface and the story that unfolds is poignant. The young boy is soon placed under the care of Dorothy the local school teacher and bereaved mother of a son thought drowned many years ago. Taking responsibility for the boy causes Dorothy to take inventory of her emotions and a hard look at the past. The narrative shifts from the current timeline to the past showing pieces of Dorothy’s journey and also that of fellow villagers. Upon her arrival Dorothy wasn’t accepted and was the center of local gossip many times. The locals seem cruel and Dorothy is socially cold so the two don’t mesh well. However, instead of the author making the villagers one dimensional “meanies” she scrapes away the social preening and shows characters who are each struggling to reach toward anything to improve the quality of their lives.

Will these flawed characters ever learn the power of an extended hand or kindness?

A character study of the many facets of forgiveness.

Sadness and growth are thick within these pages, making this a worthwhile debut.