Audio: Women of the Dunes - Sarah Maine

Narrated by Ruth Urquhart

Publication date Jul 24, 2018 by Tantor Audio

Audio book, Running time 11 hrs

Fiction /His fic

For review

My thoughts

This book has 4 POVS, even if Libby is the main one.

Libby comes to Scotland for a dig. But her great grandmother was from there and she knows the legend they are to uncover. 

Then there is Ellen in 1890, a servant at the big house. She loves the old legend. And the question is, why did she leave for Canada? What happened back the? Ellen had her head in the clouds. I get that she was pretty, but everyone sure went crazy for her. Also, she was not alone with her POV, the priest Oliver has a POV here too.

Which brings us to Ulla, who comes with her dying lover to this part of Scotland that will have her name. Fleeing from her husband and meeting a monk, but, it was not Ulla who had this POV. It was Oran the monk who was fine living there as a hermit before vikings comes and mess things up. Oran was so! Well you can imagine, but he was a man of his time. I did wonder about Ulla and her thoughts, but we never got those. Oh and how on earth could they speak with each other?

A dig. And uncovering what happened to her ancestor. Libby has a lot before her. And she also becomes embroiled with those who own the land. Oh he was hard to get to know, but I liked him. You will see.

A lovely book set in different times and connected to each other. In more than one way.

Narrator Ruth Urquhart

I really like her voice and she was perfect for this.

Blurb

From the author of the acclaimed novels The House Between Tides and Beyond the Wild River, a rich, atmospheric tale set on the sea-lashed coast of west Scotland, in which the lives of a ninth-century Norsewoman, a nineteenth-century woman, and a twenty-first-century archeologist weave together after a body is discovered in the dunes.

Libby Snow has always felt the pull of Ullanesse a lush Scottish island enshrouded in myth and deeply important to her family. Her great-great-grandmother Ellen was obsessed with the strange legend of Ulla, a Viking maiden who washed up on shore with the nearly lifeless body of her husband—and who inspired countless epic poems and the island’s name.

Central to the mystery is an ornate chalice and Libby, an archaeologist, finally has permission to excavate the site where Ulla is believed to have lived. But what Libby finds in the ancient dunes is a body from the Victorian era, clearly murdered…and potentially connected to Ellen.

What unfolds is an epic story that spans centuries, with Libby mining Ellen and Ulla’s stories for clues about the body, and in doing so, discovering the darker threads that bind all three women together across history.