Kathryn Lasky DAUGHTERS OF THE SEA

Hannah wants to be normal, but she’s not. While others in Boston complain of the moody sea, it beckons her. The sea’s billowing waves soothe her, while rolling fields make her ill. Hannah leaves a ring of salt in the bathtub at night, and can see a faint tracing of scales on her feet. There is something in her that’s different, wrong, and deeply thrilling.
Only one person seems to know who – or what – Hannah is. He’s a guest in the house where she works as a scullery girl, and his fascinated gaze follows her. She doesn’t understand the pull he exerts or her longing. But even as the mystery deepens, Hannah is sure of one thing. A sea change is coming.

On a desolate island off the coast of Maine May Plum, the lighthouse keepers daughter, life is monotonous, restrictive and dangerously dry. Ensnared in a web of tensions between her beloved father and her vindictive mother there is scarcely room to breathe. By May craves water more than air.

But after her fifteenth birthday, the urge to swim becomes overpowering and May makes a life-changing discovery. She does not belong on land where girls are expected to be docile and obedient. She’s a mermaid, a creature of the sea.

At first, swimming provides the freedom May’s always craved. But then she meets Hugh, a visiting astronomer who awakens sensations she’s never experienced, either on land or in the ocean. May knows that a college student would never fall for a lighthouse keeper’s daughter, but Hugh soon begins to spend more time gazing at May than at the stars . . . and the expression of wonder on his face doesn’t change.

What had been an easy choice becomes agonizing when May has to ask an impossible question: Is the thrill of the sea worth turning away from love on land?