The Sea House #bookreview @Litfuse

About the book:  The Sea House

 

Scotland, 1860.

Reverend Alexander Ferguson, naive and newly-ordained, takes up his new parish, a poor, isolated patch on the Hebridean island of Harris. His time on the island will irrevocably change the course of his life, but the white house on the edge of the dunes keeps its silence long after Alexander departs. It will be more than a century before the Sea House reluctantly gives up its secrets. Ruth and Michael buy the grand but dilapidated building and begin to turn it into a home for the family they hope to have. Their dreams are marred by a shocking discovery. The tiny bones of a baby are buried beneath the house; the child’s fragile legs are fused together — a mermaid child. Who buried the bones? And why? Ruth needs to solve the mystery of her new home — but the answers to her questions may lie in her own past.

Based on a real nineteenth-century letter to The Times in which a Scottish clergyman claimed to have seen a mermaid, The Sea House is an epic, sweeping tale of loss and love, hope and redemption, and how we heal ourselves with the stories we tell.

 

Purchase a copy: http://amzn.to/ZSbs53

 

 

Elisabeth Gifford grew up in a vicarage in the industrial Midlands. She studied French literature and world religions at Leeds University. She is the author of The House of Hope: A Story of God’s Love and Provision for the Abandoned Orphans of China and has written articles for The Times and the Independent and has a Diploma in Creative Writing from Oxford OUDCE and an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway College. She is married with three children. They live in Kingston on Thames but spend as much time as possible in the Hebrides.

 

Find Elisabeth online: website, Facebook

 

 

My thoughts:  This is a very unique  book.  I love that it does have a basis in a historical account.  Those are some of my favorite books because you know that at least part of the book is true!  Even if it’s only one event, it gives the story some plausibility.  Having said that, The Sea House is probably not a book I would have picked up while browsing books at a library or book store.  I am definitely glad to have read this book and truly wish that I could live in the sea house as well.  As a nurse I love to think of the medical reason a child would be born with their ones fused together, there are actually some historical accounts of this happening.