MY FATHER'S MIGRATION AND RETURN

MY FATHER’S MIGRATION AND RETURN

What do you owe the people who love you? And can understanding ever be enough?

In 1706, Samuel Edmund Whitford—Cambridge naturalist, Anglican curate, father of three with a fourth child due—sails away from his family to study bird migration in the Pacific. He promises to return in three years.

His life takes a different course.

Shipwrecked in Samoa, Samuel makes a choice that transforms abandonment into betrayal—rather than seeking rescue, he integrates into Samoan society, fathers five more children, and continues his research for fifty years. His English family has believed him dead for over a decade.

But the word of his survival reaches England…

When he finally returns to England in 1755, his daughter Margaret—now an accomplished naturalist herself—must confront a father who was both a distinguished natural philosopher whose work advanced ornithology and a moral coward who chose personal fulfillment over every obligation.

Seven years after his death, Margaret writes his biography not to forgive him, but to understand him.

Now the first woman elected to the Royal Society’s correspondence circle, she examines her father’s journals, letters, and scientific papers with unflinching honesty. Her 18th-century voice—formally elegant yet devastatingly intimate—refuses the comfort of either condemnation or redemption.

She understands precisely why her father made his choices.

She will not forgive him for them.


MY FATHER’S MIGRATION AND RETURN explores whether contradictions can be held in honest tension—whether one can fully comprehend someone’s motivations while withholding moral absolution.

This is literary historical fiction for readers who want:

• Morally complex characters who defy easy judgment
• Authentic 18th-century voice without archaic opacity
• Science taken seriously (the bird migration research is real)
• A daughter’s fierce intelligence confronting her father’s choices
• The collision of European and Pacific Islander worldviews
• Historical fiction that refuses easy redemption narratives

For readers of Geraldine Brooks, Tracy Chevalier, Andrea Barrett, and Hilary Mantel—sophisticated historical fiction that asks hard questions and trusts readers with uncomfortable answers.


One reader’s reaction: “A stunning novel that refuses to look away from the moral complexities of genius, ambition, and the families we leave behind.”

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