Salt and Skin by Eliza Henry-Jones is a beautiful lyrical story with evocative descriptions of place that make the location a main character. 

Luda and her two children, Darcy and Min move to Seannay from Australia soon after Luda’s husband dies in a car accident. Seannay is a remote Scottish island and a place still steeped in the folklore of the witches who were found guilty of the crime of calling whales. The family are given accommodation in the ‘ghost house’ that has witch marks carved in the walls.

The ghost house is the only habitable place on Seannay, which is hitched to Big Island via a causeway. Seannay has no trees, just the house and turf and gorse and piles of stone and slate where other houses and byres had once stood. The ghost house is tiny and smells of damp sand and chalk. 

Luda is a photo journalist tasked with documenting how climate change is affecting the islands. On her first day she is photographing the cliffs when they collapse taking a small girl with them. Luda captures the moment on film just before the girl dies and the release of the images puts her offside with the locals.

Luda snaps a few frames. She inspects them and is impressed by the mood of the midwinter light, which she had expected to be flaring or dull. She lifts the camera back to her eye, trains it back on the cliffs. And then the world collapses.

Over time the family develop relationships with the locals including Theo, a foundling who washed up on the island years before and has webbed finger. The islanders think he is a selkie. Darcy falls in love with him.

This is what she knows: being haunted is not static. It is a fluid thing, a constellation of changing colours. Some days, she sense him everywhere. Other days, she barely thinks of him. On those days she will recognise his absence – her own self-absorbed carelessness – and it will be like a physical blow. She will stagger.

Salt and Skin is a family drama with the feel of a gothic novel. The story is infused with grief, loss, fury and tenderness, and explores a range of themes including myth, folklore and magic.