A Sweet Sting of Salt

Once a young woman uncovers a dark secret about her neighbor and his mysterious new wife, she’ll have to fight to keep herself--and the woman she loves--safe in this stunning queer reimagining of the classic folktale ＂The Selkie Wife.＂

＂Laced with a slow-building sense of Gothic dread, Sutherland’s captivating debut is an intensely beautiful experience you won’t soon forget.＂--Paulette Kennedy, author of The Witch of Tin Mountain

When a sharp cry wakes Jean in the middle of the night during a terrible tempest, she’s convinced it must have been a dream. But when the cry comes again, Jean ventures outside and is shocked by what she discovers--a young woman in labor, drenched to the bone in the bitter cold and able to speak barely a word of English.

Although Jean is the only midwife for miles around, she’s at a loss for who this woman is or where she’s from; Jean can only assume that she must be the new wife of the neighbor up the road, Tobias. And when Tobias does indeed arrive at her cabin in search of his wife, Muirin, Jean’s questions continue to multiply. Why has he kept his wife’s pregnancy a secret? And why does Muirin’s open demeanor change completely the moment she’s in his presence?

Though Jean learned long ago that she should stay out of other people’s business, her growing concern--and growing feelings--for Muirin mean that she can’t simply set her worries aside. But when the answers she finds are more harrowing than she ever could have imagined, she fears she may have endangered herself, Muirin, and the baby. Will she be able to put things right and save the woman she loves before it’s too late, or will someone have to pay for Jean’s actions with their life?

Rose Sutherland was born and raised a voracious reader of anything she could get her hands on in rural Nova Scotia, and once even fell off the roof of her house trying to re-enact Anne of Green Gables. She’s continued to be entertainingly foolhardy since, graduating theater school in New York City, apprenticing at a pâtisserie in France, and most recently, working in theater in Toronto. She’s mildly obsessed with the idea of one day owning a large dog, several chickens, and maybe a goat. A Sweet Sting of Salt is her first novel, and the story is a love letter to the wild beauty of the place she calls home.