The Orphan of Salt Winds

By: Elizabeth Brooks

Narrated by: Helen Lloyd

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.

England, 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.

Elizabeth 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.

©2019 Elizabeth Brooks (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Hated it

Waste of a credit for sure. I kept waiting for it to get better but it never did. The characters are blah at best and by the time I was half way through the story I just didn’t care. The ending was a letdown. I should have turned it off hours ago. Do not recommend at all

Mind numbing - Meh

The authors incredible, stupendous, insidious use of adjectives to describe the simplest detail or item was so distracting that it is hard to keep track of the storyline. I forced myself to finish it, but for the life of me, I don’t know why. I appreciate her efforts, but wow….

Weird!

I had a hard time staying focused. It was a weird story. Not at all what was expected by the title.