The Sea-Glass Shore by Julie Salmon Kelleher

A lyrical grounded fantasy that characterizes the American spirit of folklore in both fresh and familiar ways

Folklore is the people’s history: it is how a community comes together to assert their truth to the world, no matter what shape that truth takes. In Julie Salmon Kelleher’s The Sea-Glass Shore, both the history of the Pacific Northwest and the very real questions about its future are embodied in an array of characters living in the seaside town of Higginson, Washington, and more literally than one might think.

Spanning a generation, the narrative follows Jack, a young man fresh off of a whirlwind of travels who is trying to finally settle himself down. He does so in the typical way of salmon: he returns home to spawn. How he meets who he chooses to settle down with, however, is as atypical as the catalyst of any grounded fantasy novel should be. Rona washes ashore at Jack’s feet. A woman holding a velveteen grey bundle, she captivates Jack, who has made his career in the academia of folklore. He recognizes her for what she is immediately: a selkie. A seal who is also a woman, who call pull her skin off and live on two legs. A woman who was made for the sea but instead found a reason to stay ashore.

“Don’t fall in love, Rona. But she is falling in love: with the grip of her fingers, the air so cool against the thin, thin skin of a face exposed to sky, to mist, to a kiss of cloud above the sea. She is falling in love with the simple gravity of flesh on stone.

“The body she wears now is made to fall.”

She and Jack live in an isolated house on the cove where they met, their own little slice of Eden. Which, of course, means a serpent lurks nearby. The serpent, in this case, is the say-nilh-xay, a creature of indigenous lore. A harbinger of doom.

Jack and Rona’s beloved cove is under attack by P.B. Stormalong, a man whose evolving persona is best paralleled by his evolution in voice. When Rona first meets P.B., before she and Jack are truly together, he laughs, “a big and oceany sound: the snap of a sail, the cry of a gull, the boom of a wave as it socks the shore.”

After Jack and Rona’s twins are born, P.B. approaches Rona and the two children on the beach of the cove. He’s riding a horse, inspecting the property, and he laughs, “a big and Western sound: the howl of a wolf, a pickax clang, the grunt of a buffalo.”

When P.B. runs into Rona on the cove the next time, his intention to develop is clear: he’s brought a prospective buyer along with him. P.B. laughs, “a big and woodsy sound: a chainsaw roar, a raven’s caw, the crack of a treefall in a gale.”

And when P.B. sees Jack outside of the folklore center where the latter is studying up on the history of the say-nilh-xay, he laughs once more, and, “No laugh had ever been bigger. It sounded like a thing that would last forever. The ocean. The West. The woods.”

It is not particularly surprising to Rona, how hard P.B. fights to own and develop the cove, despite the salmon who need the estuary to thrive. It does surprise her to find such an avid ally in the environmental fight: Ava Corbin, a curious, dedicated woman who gets her information off the wings of the wind. Ava knows the cove is a harbor for the twins, a portal home for Rona, the place where Jack planted a gold ring of love into their garden. She helps Rona see just how much she has, and just how much she has to lose with the land’s development.

In this story of community, of environmentalism, of grief, Kelleher’s lyricism and turns of prose shine, no place more so than in her characterization. This cast truly feels like they belong together on this narrative stage. At times, however, the storyline suffers because of the sparsity of prose. When it comes to character motivation, the reader can be left scratching their heads. Additionally, if the reader is not previously familiar with folklore, they may need additional context before the connective tissue between themes becomes apparent. The language itself hooks the reader immediately; the line loses its tension without those deeper dives into the waters of the characters’ interiority.

An earnest tribute to the Pacific Northwest and its complex geographic, historical, and political climate, the work captures a woman, a family, and a town in transition, alongside the questions that pockmark their road forward. It is a lens into nonconformist families, the joys and challenges of parenting and growing up, and the processing of enormous loss. For readers familiar with the area and its lore, especially, it should spark nostalgia, inspiration, and conversation.

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