Marrow Island - Softcover

What you would give to save the thing you love the most?

It has been twenty years since Lucie Bowen left the islands. Twenty years ago, the May Day Quake set loose catastrophic waves along the west coast, from Alaska to California, shattering thousands of lives. Twenty years ago, Lucie’s father disappeared in an explosion at the Marrow Island oil refinery, a tragedy that destroyed the island’s ecosystem and sent Lucie and her mother to the mainland to start anew. Twenty years ago, Lucie and her best friend, Katie, were just Puget Sound children, tucked up under their desks, hovering under mylar sheets, hoping to survive.
 
Now, Katie writes with strange and miraculous news. Marrow Island is no longer uninhabitable, no longer abandoned. She is part of a community, a mysterious Colony, that has, somehow, conjured life again from Marrow’s soil. Lucie returns. Her journalist instincts tell her there’s more to the Colony and their charismatic leader—a former nun with an all-consuming plan—than its members want her to know. The island’s astonishing rebirth seems to have come at great cost—perhaps to the colonists themselves. As she uncovers their secrets, will Lucie endanger more than their mission? What price will she pay for the truth?
 
I was always a part of you, and you were always a part of me, Katie writes. And in this marvelously spun story Alexis Smith reaches into the depths of our connections to our pasts, our loved ones, our devotions. Our choices may bring us to the brink, but within our promises to each other and our hopes for the future, at the intersection of science and faith and grace, there may well be miracles in the making.
 

Praise for Marrow Island
 
“Returning to the islands of her youth, Lucie Bowen finds her long-lost soulmate caught up with a mysterious commune and finds herself with no choice but to face the painful past. At once a page-turner and a sustained lyrical meditation, this novel also shines a spotlight on the anxieties of living in a world with such environmental uncertainties. The depth of what we possess—and what we stand to lose—is achingly drawn.” —Amanda Coplin, author of The Orchardist
 
“Conjuring a lush and mysterious landscape, Marrow Island investigates the impact of the losses of the past—be they loved ones, failed quests, or the environmental calamities brought on by our collective blindness. By turns elegiac, compelling, and timely, it seeks real answers and finds the possibility of miracles. This is a beautiful novel.” —Edan Lepucki, author of California
 
“Smith marries the page-turning urgency of a thriller with a beautifully crafted story of loss, love, and rebuilding. A gorgeous, compelling novel.” —Cari Luna, author of The Revolution of Every Day
 
“From the intricately suspenseful plotting, the remote and intoxicating atmosphere, and the haunted, flinty heroine at the center, this novel absorbed me with the force of a seaside storm, leaving me awed and breathless.” —Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me