He scrambled to hold on to something, but it was no use. He hit the deck sideways, sliding into the cold. He heard the terrible rushing sound of water, sucking hungrily at them. The trawler tipped, crashing into the valley between the swells. White knuckles gripping the railing, the two men steeled themselves. A strike of lightning met the ocean in fury, igniting the water into two massive walls rising on either side of the boat. But a confused swell of square waves-the dread of every sailor and fisherman-breached across the bow, throwing him to the rails. He yelled to his mate to angle the hull into the wind. The sky bruised from blue to black, and the sea’s hunger widened like a gaping yawn. The certainty of Norway’s shoreline was lost in the ominous squall lines dripping from the heavens. No longer steering toward the fjords of home, the vessel turned and turned in the endless surge of ocean.

Pushing the trawler away from any hope of land. The wind-a fluttering of breath from those Sisters of Fate-sent wave after rising wave, rolling at a steady pace from the west. The storm was a gift from the Norns, though he didn’t know it. Witnessing this, Maeva comes to a drastic conclusion: she must make Leidah promise to keep a secret from Pieter-a perilous one that may eventually free them all. And as Maeva’s elusive past begins to beckon, she realizes that she must help her daughter navigate and control her own singular birthright if the child is to survive the human world.īut the protective love Pieter has for his family is threatening the secure life they have slowly built and increasingly becoming a tragic obstacle. But unlike Pieter, who is blinded by love, Maeva is aware that the villagers, who profess a rigid faith to the new God and claim to have abandoned the old ways, are watching for any sign of transgression-and are eager to pounce and punish.įollowing both mother and daughter from the shadows and through time, an inquisitive shapeshifter waits for the Fates to spin their web, and for Maeva to finally reclaim who she once was. And Maeva’s adoring husband, Pieter, wants nothing more than for his new family to be accepted by all. Maeva tries to hide the girl from the suspicious townsfolk of the austere village of Ørken, just as she conceals her own magical ancestry from her daughter. Upon every turn of season, her mother, Maeva, worries as her daughter’s peculiarities blossom-inside the root of the tiny child, a strange power is taking hold. In the hinterlands of old Norway, Leidah Pietersdatter is born blue-skinned, with webbed hands and feet. They don’t feel the danger coming, riding in on the wind. An utterly gripping love story set in nineteenth-century Norway, about a woman rescued from the sea, the fisherman who marries her, their tiny and unusually gifted daughter, and the shapeshifter who follows their every move, perfect for fans of Alice Hoffman, Yangsze Choo, Eowyn Ivey, and Neil Gaiman.

Becoming leidah by michelle grierson