The Fisherman’s Gift (Coming March 2025)
By Julia R. Kelly
Simon & Schuster, 324 pages
★★★★
Scotland, 1900: A small fishing village in a land where strict Calvinist morals prevail, though they have eroded in cities like Edinburgh. That’s where Dorothy, a young teacher, was raised. Now she stands on the rocky, windswept shores of Skerry, where she is about to become the new school mistress in a wee fishing village far from “Auld Reekie.” From the start she is viewed with suspicion because she’s a city gal who knows nothing of the customs and rhythms of her new home. The fact that she is terrified is viewed by locals as being aloof and uppity.
The Fisherman’s Gift is the debut novel from Julia R. Kelly and it’s a good one, though she admits she was inspired in part by the 2016 film The Light Between Oceans and perhaps borrows too much from it. Nonetheless, Kelly gives us a portrait of an isolated Scottish village and a tale that is by turns hopeful, sad, and inspiring. Kelly uses a then/now structure that becomes a puzzle for readers to piece together. She also employs multiple points of view.
When Dorothy arrives her only true allies are the minister and Joseph, a fisherman, handyman, and handsome bachelor. In good Victorian style, though, Kelly veers away from any straightforward romance. Hers is a series of doomed romances and missed cues. Dorothy casts aside her hopes when she discovers that Joseph is a regular visitor to the family of two young sisters, Jeanie and Agnes, and that it seems to be a given that Agnes will marry Joseph. He, however, is either not the marrying kind or has placed his hopes elsewhere.
In the “then” sections we learn that Dorothy marries William Gray, an unexciting but steady man, much to the chagrin of his sister Jane, who dislikes Dorothy. Agnes ends up with a very unreliable man. The novel’s crux is that Dorothy gives birth to Moses, who becomes her heart’s delight. Joseph always seems to be about to show Moses how to do things and even makes him toys, which infuriates Dorothy as she thinks it's inappropriate. ( I shan’t spoil why!) Alas, when he’s still a lad, Moses ventures out one night, makes his way to the beach, and drowns. Dorothy blames herself for the tragedy and disappears into herself to the point where she is estranged from William.
The ”gift” of the book’s title occurs in the “now” sections. A young boy washes ashore and is near death when Joseph carries him from the beach to the minister’s home. He is nursed back to health and is the spitting image of Moses. Could it be a miracle? He is sent into Dorothy’s care and she is torn between reason and faith, as well as intellectual and emotional truth. The child speaks what seems to be gibberish, but a bonding unfolds with Dorothy.
The boy’s origin is one of several mysteries embedded within The Fisherman’s Gift. On a more prosaic level, Kelly’s novel is a close look at village relationships in a place where the sleet blows sideways from the ocean and snowy winters are long. Imagine the loneliness in a hamlet in which outsiders tends to remain so in the minds of locals long after they’ve lived there. In Dorothy’s case, she wins over some of her neighbors, whilst others keep her at arm’s length. Norah Barclay, the village gossip, is always ready to dispense news, even if much of it skirts the line between reality and nonsense. Dorothy does gain an ally in Mrs. Brown, the widow who runs the store in Skerry, but her shop is also where women gather to dispense and hear gossip. (For men, it’s the local pub.)
The Fisherman’s Gift keeps you guessing until near the end. Even then, your book group can bat around exactly what the “gift” is. It’s too bad the book won’t release until March. Though there’s nothing particularly Christmas-themed in it, it feels like a novel for the holiday season. Perhaps late winter/early spring will have to do.
Rob Weir
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