Donald, a young fisherman, is overwhelmed when he comes across a group of beautiful women dancing on the shore beneath the moonlight. They are selkies — seals that shed their skin once a year to become human for a few hours. The decision he makes that night, to capture one of these selkies and make her his bride, alters the course of his future.

Back home in his close-knit village in Scotland, he has burgeoning feelings for his selkie bride. With her help, he begins to first question, then change, the town that has been entrenched in the past for generations. He must somehow reconcile his small community’s hostility towards outsiders with the responsibilities of love, and find the inner strength required to atone for terrible wrongs.

Based on an entrancing and timeless Scottish legend, Sealskin nevertheless speaks to the modern reader in its rendering of man’s need for love and his ability to grow.

Su Bristow
Su Bristow won the Exeter Novel Prize for Sealskin in 2013. A consultant medical herbalist by day, she is also the author of several short stories, as well as two books on herbal medicine and the co-author of two on relationship skills.