After German bombs level Eilidh Flett’s neighborhood on the outskirts of Glasgow, mum sends her to stay with her Aunt Rhona and cousin Magnus on tiny, rocky Mirk Skerry. Eilidh misses her dad, who’s been lost at sea, resents her grumpy cousin, and doesn’t know how to fill her days. Why does Aunt Rhona spend so much time alone in the tower of the island’s defunct lighthouse, which Eilidh isn’t allowed to enter? And why do Magnus and his mum speak a mysterious language called Norn? One night, a ship is torpedoed near the island, and Eilidh accidentally discovers that she comes from a long line of Nightkeepers, who help usher on the souls of the drowned. The cousins set out on an increasingly dangerous and frantic search for the lost seaglass horn of the mystical aquatic Finfolk, which has the power to recall the souls of everyone who’s ever drowned at sea, including their own fathers and Cam, the ghost of a boy from the sunken ship who’s been left stranded on Mirk Skerry. Together, they face down stormy seas, German bombers, sheer cliffs, underwater caves, loss, grief, and even the Finfolk themselves, in a briskly told adventure that delightfully interweaves Scottish and Norse mythical and linguistic elements.
