Frankie recommends... The Salvage - Anbara Salam

Frankie says... Salam is my auto-buy historical fiction author! Both her earlier book Hazardous Spirits and this new feature The Salvage are masterclasses in capturing women - in this case wonderfully flawed archaeologist, Marta - and all their oddities, mental pressures, feelings and fears. The Salvage grips your in its bitter climate, and shivering and shuddering pulls you along to its dramatic conclusion. She really can get under your skin with her pacing and imagery, and the descriptions of this remote Scottish island transport you entirely to that desolate place! Creepy, spooky Gothic historical fiction with a tender love story in the face of the ominous nuclear threat as well as closer, more pressing worries about Marta's safety, future and sanity. What's really going on the island? And what was that strange figure crouching just there...? 

---

It is 1962, and Marta Khoury, a trail-blazing marine archaeologist, has travelled to Cairnroch, a small island off the east coast of Scotland. An Arctic shipwreck containing the remains of a famous Victorian explorer has been towed back to the island at the behest of his wealthy descendants. Marta's job is to retrieve valuable artefacts from the vessel, deep beneath the freezing Scottish waters.

But on her first dive, she becomes convinced she has seen a ghostly figure lurking in the wreckage. When Marta discovers objects from the vessel have inexplicably disappeared, she must work to uncover their whereabouts before her boss - who is also her ex-husband - discovers their absence. As a series of unsettling and strange occurrences begins to unfold, Marta's work trip turns into a long winter as the worst snowstorms of the century sweep in and trap the islanders, and their ghosts, in an icy wilderness.