num_pages: 293
description: England 1939. Ten-year-old Virginia Wrathmell arrives at Salt Winds a secluded house on the edge of a marsh to meet her adoptive parentspractical dependable Clem and glamorous mercurial Lorna. The marsh with its deceptive tides is a beautiful but threatening place. Virginias new parents marriage is full of secrets and tensions she doesnt quite understand and their wealthy neighbor Max Deering drops by too often taking an unwholesome interest in the familys affairs. Only Clem offers a true sense of home. War feels far away among the birds and shifting sandsuntil 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 Brookss gripping debut mirrors its marshy landscapefull 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.
language: English
title: The Orphan of Salt Winds
publisher: Tin House Books