The Spirit of Scatarie

By Lesley Crewe
 
You might be startled that this tale will be told to you by a ghost. I prefer the word spirit but it’s all the same. The truth is, I have as much right to tell this story as anyone. Scatarie Island belongs to the living and the dead.
 
Christmas Day, 1922: three babies are born on Scatarie Island, off the coast of Cape Breton. Although born to different parents, Hardy, Sam, and Mary Alice grow up together in their wild homeplace, exploring the rocky coastline, picking bakeapples, and scavenging treasures from the countless ships that have wrecked there over the centuries.
 
But change is lapping at the shores of this isolated island, the Second World War the biggest change of all. One friend leaves to fight, one tends the light, and one struggles to understand how a place where wealth is measured in fish and family can possibly survive this outmigration.
 
Only one of them knows about Cara. A girl who wrecked on the island’s shores a hundred years earlier, emigrating from Ireland. A girl who fell in love with the windswept grasses and salt-scrubbed air and tight community of Scatarie, and remains as a spirit. A girl who keeps watch, everywhere from the rugged island to the blood-soaked beaches of France, nudging the three friends towards their destinies.
 
Part ghost story, part romance, part history, and a stirring tribute to young soldiers and their brave war brides, The Spirit of Scatarie is an epic tale with whispering island winds at its heart.