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ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE BOOK

In the heat of a long summer Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat.

His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost.

Desperate to ignore it all–to avoid the future rushing towards him–Ned dreams of open water.

As his story unfolds over the following decades, we see how Ned’s choices that summer come to shape the course of his life, the fate of his family and the future of the valley, with its seasons of death and rebirth.

The third novel by the award-winning author of Flames and The Rain Heron, Limberlost is an extraordinary chronicle of life and land: of carnage and kindness, blood ties and love.

DEDICATION

For my family

EPIGRAPH

In the economy of Nature nothing is ever lost.

—Gene Stratton-Porter

1

1

IT WAS BELIEVED a whale had gone mad at the mouth of the river. Several fishing boats had been destroyed in acts of violence so extraordinary they were deemed inhuman. Each attack had come at dusk, while the boats were passing the heads on their way back to port—the same area where plumes of spray were supposedly erupting from the water. Transport ships reported powerful, mournful vibrations ringing through their hulls. Gulls flew strangely; cormorants seemed skittish. Ocean swimmers’ strokes were thrown out of rhythm by a high, ancient melody that rose through the brine. A fluked tail had been seen troubling the waves.

Ned was five when all this happened. In later years he struggled to remember the incidents clearly, but at the time it was all anyone was talking about. The animal had been harpooned far down south, someone’s uncle said, and after fleeing north was now visiting vengeance on any ship it encountered. Another version of that story claimed the harpoon had lodged in the whale’s brain, turning it feral and vicious. Another was that the whalers had missed the beast but not its pod, and the creature had been driven insane after witnessing the slaughter of its family.

There were other theories too, ones that didn’t include whaling, ideas of lunar imbalances and divine judgement, although they weren’t paid much attention. Most held the southern whalers responsible for fouling the animal’s mind. There was talk of writing letters, demanding reparations, getting the council involved.

‘It’s nonsense,’ Ned’s father told his children. He’d caught them whispering about the wrecks at the dinner table, unaware he’d returned from the orchard.

‘There is no whale,’ he said. ‘No monster. Fishermen do three things: they drink too much, and they make things up.’

He took off his coat and hung it on a hook by the door.

‘What’s the third thing,’ asked Ned’s eldest brother, Bill.