Selkie's Song

The Fadό Trilogy #3

by Clare Austin

This is the final book in the Fadό Trilogy following Butterfly and Angel's Share.

They call her Selkie.

Muireann O'Malley often felt she was born of the sea but refuses to let sentimentality stand in the way of her crusade to protect the shore she has wandered since a small child. A patch of West Clare, Ireland, and a derelict building are all that stand between the cliffs she loves and the callous grip of progress.

Tynan Sloane should be content with success, but a dream beckons. O'Fallon's Pub in historic downtown Boston is for sale and Tynan wants to make it his. An unexpected inheritance of land in the west of Ireland could provide the financing he needs. He doesn't expect his quick trip to sell the land to rekindle youthful passion.

Fifteen years ago, they had an adolescent crush. Now disparate ambition and a legend as old as Ireland herself stand between them. Will love and myth collide to bring them together or tear them apart?

210 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2013

About the author

I have always been a dreamer. As a child I tripped the fine line between reality and fantasy with ease. Books were magical vehicles put together out of paper, ink, and paste with the sole purpose of transporting me to worlds afar. I became a frequent flyer. I crept through haunted mansions and solved mysteries with Nancy Drew, lived in the Little House in the Big Woods with Laura Ingalls and galloped with the wind in my hair with Black Beauty. We had an old set of tomes called The Book of Knowledge in our house. I think there might have been twelve volumes. I read them all, over and over, gleaning details of the natural world, literature and history. When I was eight years old, I submitted my first story to a well known New York Publishing house. How I wish I still had that rejection letter. Somehow, that did not discourage me at all. Half a lifetime later I would realize my dream. When our sons were little, I learned the maternal art of multitasking. Baby at my breast, I could break up a dispute between toddler and pre-schooler, cook, bake bread, can tomatoes, knit a sock and read a novel with ease. If this screams “exaggeration,” well, I am a fiction author! All the time I told myself “I could write one of those novels.” All I needed to do is sit down and type out my stories. Then, reality would smack me in the head and I’d go change another diaper. When I tell people that I am a writer and that I have written several full length novels, their response is often, “I’ve always wanted to do that.” Well, I did too. And what was holding me up? Not inspiration. Characters were knocking at the walls of my cranium day and night trying to get me to tell their stories. Not time. I’ve always found that the busier I am, the more productive I become. As most moments of realisation present themselves, mine was simple. I sat myself down at my new laptop and started to type. I wrote several hours a day…sometimes with such bad eye fatigue I had to write with my eyes closed and fix the errors later. I wrote my first 400 page novel in less than a month. It terrified me. Was this my only story? Would I be able to do it again? So as not to give myself a chance to worry over this possibility, I wrote three more books that year. So, what does a writer do when she has stories to tell? She works toward getting those stories published. I wanted to write a story that would make my readers laugh, cry and end up wanting more. I wrote Butterfly for you. I hope you enjoy it.

August 20, 2008

Clare Austin

Reviews

[Mary Mcway · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ages ago, along the western cliffs of Ireland, Patrick Conneely buried a sacred item within the roots of a whitethorn tree near the ancient fortress of the O'Malley clan. This long-lost treasure relates to the selkies - the mythic creatures of Celtic folklore who shed their skins on shore to become human on land; when they return to the sea with their sealskins, they revert to being actual seals again. Selkies are the stuff of legends to this day, and Clare Austin's novel weaves in contemporary moral struggles, economic challenges and tortured romance onto a magical landscape laden with selkie lore. What could be better?

Muireann O'Malley knows that a planned industrial fisheries project will devastate the coastal area around her home, killing many birds and seals. Muireann's mother is a Conneely, and old legends hold that the Conneelys'ancestral kin were selkies. Meanwhile in Boston, Tynan Sloane (from Ireland) is planning to buy a bar with the proceeds from the sale of property in West Clare, Ireland, left to him by a deceased relative, Albert O'Malley. Albert had told Muireann that the key to saving the place was buried there.

And so, in lovely bursts of descriptive, melodic prose, Austin deposits Tynan back in Ireland where he encounters his old sweetheart, Muireann, who is unaware of the purpose of his visit. She soon learns that he is the unknown someone with a claim on the old place, and that he wants to sell it to the fisheries consortium. At this juncture, readers must prepare for total immersion into the complex mysteries of contemporary western Ireland - a region where the ancient world is merely steps away.

[Mayra · Rating 3 out of 5]

That Irish Thing

So I gave this book a rating of 3 stars because overall I enjoyed the story but the Irish thing was just a bit much for me. I understand the author was probably trying to be as authentic as possible towards the Irish part of the story but the accent/dialect just put me off a bit. I would definitely recommend this book to others but warn them on the Irish thing. On another note I must say I enjoyed learning about Ireland.