Wild Dark Shore

 Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy was published in 2025 and has received numerous awards including a nomination for the 2026 Edgar Award for Best Novel. The story takes place on fictional Shearwater Island which was located about where the real Macquarie Island is, between Tasmania and Antarctic. It had been chosen as a vault for seeds of every possible species of plants. However, as the result of rising sea levels which would eventually make life on the island impossible, the island is scheduled for abandonment. The scientific research station had already been abandoned, so all the scientists that had been located had left by the time the story began. Left behind was a family of caretakers and one scientist who had been chosen to get the content of the vault ready for transport to a better location. 

The story opens with the discovery of a woman, Rowan, who has washed up to the shore following a severe storm. She was alive, but there was no evidence how she possibly could have gotten there. With the help of Dominic Salt and his three children, Raff, Fen, and Orly, Rowan is gradually nursed back to health and she slowly reveals her secrets, including her marriage to the one scientist, Hank, who had been left behind to sort the seeds and get them ready for a transfer to a safer location.. Dominic had brought his children there eight years earlier following the death of his wife during child birth for Orly. Rowan was searching for her husband, Hank, but she discovered her own mixed feelings about the marriage. The isolation from the rest of the world was taking its toll on the remaining inhabitants.

 

This is really a story about life and death, and the emotions that go along with that. There’s the death of life on the island, the death of Dominic’s wife, possible murder of scientists, death of the inhabitants before they could get rescued death of the seeds that had long been protected, the drowning of Rowan as she gives her own life to save Orly. This story is very well-written with fascinating characters and a skillfully unfolding plot. I agree with the awards that have come to McConaghy for this novel, so it gets a 5/5 rating from me.

South, Scott and Amundsen's Race to the Pole

 After reading the accounts of polar explorers Shakleton and Amundsen, I decided to read the short (less than 100 pages) nonfiction account of the intense race between the two Antarctica explorers, Scott and Amundsen, as told by Hunter Stewart in South, Scott and Amundsen’s Race to the Pole. Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen were both determined to be the first to arrive at the South Pole. They had different ideas about how to form a polar expedition, and they were intense competitors. Shakleton was not a part of this particular race. It was in 1914, three years later, that Shakleton’s unsuccessful but heroic adventure occurred. 

Amundsen was methodical in his planning, and he was proven correct that dogs would be the key to his success, unlike Scott who travelled with a much larger group of men Scott also took along motor vehicles and ponies, both of which proved to be problematic. He didn’t trust dogs to be useful enough, a decision that Amundsen proved to be wrong. Amundsen a smaller group of men and he took a lot more dogs with him. Neither ponies nor cars were a part of his planning. Both explorers wrote about the hardship from the weather, although Shakleton really did a better job as he wrote about the hardships of traveling in such a remote and harsh climate.

 

Scott had trouble with his cars and ponies and that resulted in a month later start than Amundsen. The travel itself, much by foot, was arduous, incredible, breathtaking. Given the material, this reader came away with respect for having Amundsen as a leader, and it was very easy to dislike the dictatorial and self-centered efforts of Scott. Amundsen arrived at the South Pole on 12/14/11, and Scott arrived 34 days later. Amundsen made it back home to Norway, but Scott never made it back to London, having died during his belated effort to reach the pole and then get home again.

 

This short book was definitely worth reading, and it maybe the best primer that I’ve read so far as I prepare for a touristy visit to the Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica. I’ll be crossing the Drake Passage in a luxury liner, unlike the 22-foot row boats that Shakleton had. It was the Hunter’s author’s quotes from Scott’s diary that was most interesting. The diary was found in his tent and under Scott’s frozen body. Despite his failures, Scott argued in his diary that it was merely bad luck with poor timing and weather that led to his failures, not any mistake that had made in planning for this expedition. He refused to accept his responsibility for his own fatal end and that of his loyal crew.