The Orphan of Salt Winds

For fans of Eowyn Ivey, Rose Tremaine, and Kate Atkinson, The Orphan of Salt Winds is a bewitching debut about the secrets that haunt us.\n\nEngland, 1939. Ten-year-old Virginia Wrathmell arrives at Salt Winds, a secluded house on the edge of a marsh, to meet her adoptive parents-practical, dependable Clem and glamorous, mercurial Lorna. The marsh, with its deceptive tides, is a beautiful but threatening place. Virginia's new parents' marriage is full of secrets and tensions she doesn't quite understand, and their wealthy neighbor, Max Deering, drops by too often, taking an unwholesome interest in the family's affairs. Only Clem offers a true sense of home. War feels far away among the birds and shifting sands-until the day a German fighter plane crashes into the marsh, and Clem ventures out to rescue the airman. What happens next sets into motion a crime so devastating it will haunt Virginia for the rest of her life. Seventy-five years later, she finds herself drawn back to the marsh, and to a teenage girl who appears there, nearly frozen and burdened by her own secrets. In her, Virginia might have a chance at retribution and a way to right a grave mistake she made as a child. \n\nElizabeth Brooks's gripping debut mirrors its marshy landscape-full of twists and turns and moored in a tangle of family secrets. A gothic, psychological mystery and atmospheric coming-of-age story, The Orphan of Salt Winds is the portrait of a woman haunted by the place she calls home.\n\nEditorial Reviews\n\n10/22/2018\nIn her hauntingly gothic debut, Brooks beautifully mixes bittersweet youthfulness with the stinging pain of past memories. Told from the perspective of the 10-year-old orphan Virginia on the eve of WWII in the English countryside, the story begins when Virginia is adopted by a young couple and brought to Salt Winds, a large estate at the edge of a marsh. Virginia finds herself in the middle of tensions with her adoptive parents' marriage, worried that they'll want to send her back to the orphanage. Also, unbeknownst to her new father, Clem, a man has been dropping by to see his wife. Virginia feels most at home with Clem, who teaches her about marshland birds. The marsh also serves as a metaphor for Virginia's precarious situation--the tides turn quickly, shifting the landscape and opening quicksand pits. When a man parachutes from the sky into the marsh, Clem tries to rescue him even though he could be a German soldier. In alternating chapters, the far-reaching aftershocks of Clem's decision are slowly unveiled as Virginia, now an old woman wandering the halls of Salt Winds, contemplates her past. This quietly unsettling tale holds its secrets close, making for a powerful story of loss and longing. (Jan.) \n- Publishers Weekly\n\n"The Orphan of Salt Winds is a beautifully written, atmospheric novel-reminiscent of Jane Eyre with its wild, bleak setting and houseful of mysteries. . . . Bewitching and haunting."\n- Eowyn Ivey\n\n"The Orphan of Salt Winds is the perfect winter read - evocative, gothic, and utterly transportive."\n- BuzzFeed\n\n"Like Daphne du Maurier, this novel powerfully conjures up a place, a time and a story that are unforgettable."\n- Rosamund Lupton\n\n"Elizabeth Brooks's writing has a quietly magical quality that conjures the atmosphere of Salt Winds effortlessly. This novel is a tenuous and thrilling unfolding of how events in Virginia's past shape her actions in the present. An excellent blend of psychological mystery with a coming-of-age story, packaged in a unique historical setting-The Orphan of Salt Winds genuinely gave me goosebumps."\n- Johanna Albrecht\n\n"The Orphan of Salt Winds is an atmospheric, beautifully paced novel about sacrifice, the urge to belong, and revenge. It's full of well-drawn characters I loved to hate, and those that I didn't want to let go, even after I closed the last page."\n- Claire Fuller\n\n"The Orphan of Salt Winds simultaneously functions as a gothic, historical, psychological mystery and bildungsroman."\n- Arkansas International\n\n"Filled with unexpected twists, beautifully rendered characters, and told with great style, The Orphan of Salt Winds will seep into your soul."\n- Keith Donohue\n\n"I love this story! It captivated me from the first page and I was mesmerized until the last! Elizabeth Brooks has developed such wonderful characters and I developed strong feelings about all of them. . . . And then add to that some mystery with an unexpected twist at the end! What more could you ask for? A must read!"\n- Stephanie Crowe\n\n2018-10-28\n\nA remote house, a treacherous marsh, and an orphan child are the ingredients in this atmospheric gothic tale from a new British writer.\n\nVirginia Wrathmell is 86 and frail when readers first meet her in Brooks' evocative debut, reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier's haunted dramas set in wild places. It's December 2015, Virginia lives alone in spooky, decaying Salt Winds, on the edge of Tollbury Marsh, and on the last day of the year she plans to walk out to the marsh and allow it to swallow her. But in another timeline, dated December 1939, orphaned Virginia, age 10, is being introduced to Salt Winds by her kindly new adoptive father, Clem. Brooks' tale shuttles between these two eras, revealing how sensitive Virginia's childhood was swallowed up by events inside the house and on the marsh beyond. Clem's wife, Lorna, not only expresses little of her husband's welcoming excitement toward Virginia, but also seems unable to shake off the attentions of creepy local widower Max Deering, to whom Lorna was once engaged. Deering, who takes a lingering interest in Virginia, too, is forever underfoot, never more so than when Clem disappears on the marsh, searching for a German airman whose plane has crashed there. With Clem absent, a mysterious man in the attic, and villainous, mustachioed Max turning up at all hours, the atmosphere at Salt Winds becomes both secretive and feverish. And in the 2015 storyline, the house is visited by an impulsive young woman whose ties to the past compel Virginia to change--and darken--her plans for this, her last day. Ambiguous and infused with both fairy tale and matters more threatening, Brooks' novel is persuasively descriptive--"where sky, sand, and water dissolved into nothing and nowhere"--but doesn't quite knit together. Deering's semifarcical lechery, Lorna's perplexing psychology, and the ends left dangling rob the story of conviction.\n\nA committed, stylish mystery better at composing its mood music than pulling all the notes together.\n- Kirkus Reviews\n\n"The Orphan of Salt Winds is a beautifully written, atmospheric novel?reminiscent of Jane Eyre with its wild, bleak setting and houseful of mysteries. . . . Bewitching and haunting."- Eowyn Ivey, author of THE SNOW CHILD\n\n"The Orphan of Salt Winds is an atmospheric, beautifully paced novel about sacrifice, the urge to belong, and revenge. It's full of well-drawn characters I loved to hate, and those that I didn't want to let go, even after I closed the last page."- Claire Fuller, author of SWIMMING LESSONS\n\n"Filled with unexpected twists, beautifully rendered characters, and told with great style, The Orphan of Salt Winds will seep into your soul."- Keith Donohue, author of THE STOLEN CHILD\n- From the Publisher\n\nFrom the opening lines of this audiobook, listeners are transported to Salt Winds, a crumbling, secluded house on the edge of a marsh in England. The location becomes a character as narrator Helen Lloyd weaves the past and present of Virginia Wrathmell. The story begins in 2015, when elderly Virginia believes she has received a sign that tells her to take her own life in the marsh. The story flashes back to 1939, when the recently adopted 10-year-old first arrived at Salt Winds. From there, Lloyd takes listeners back and forth as the tragedies and mysteries surrounding Salt Winds unfold. Despite a pace that drags at times, Lloyd brings Brooks's descriptive writing to life. She makes certain the story's atmosphere is palpable as Virginia attempts to untangle her history and right past wrongs. K.S.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine\n- FEBRUARY 2019 - AudioFile