Beyond the Shallow Bank

In the year 1901, artist Margaret Talbot faces a failing art career and marriage, as well as the emotional and physical pain of losing a baby in stillbirth and nearly dying herself.
Margaret and her husband, John, have journeyed the world creating magazine articles that she illustrated and he writes. Where John had been affectionate and supportive before the stillbirth, he has turned cold and callous afterwards, withdrawing all physical and emotional contact, even to take her hand.
Margaret was originally trained to paint in oils, but John forbids her to do so saying she must work exclusively on the illustrations for the articles. Margaret defies John and paints in secret, but cannot find that special something she strive for.
She considers leaving John, but in 1901 the state of New York does not grant divorces. She could travel to Mexico to obtain one, but she would be ruined professionally and financially and John would have no legal obligation to support her.
The Talbots travel to a small fishing village where Margaret encounters many people. An elderly woman becomes a confidant. Another woman calls her a witch. A man carries a funeral urn containing he dead wife's ashes everywhere he goes and talks to is as though she were still alive. Everyone in the village talks to the urn as well. One young woman skips and jumps and sings nonsense songs. Margaret fears the woman suffers from a childhood trauma, but some in the village say she is a selkie, a creature from Celtic mythology who lives on the land as a human and in the sea as a seal.
Through their influences and her own self-determination, Margaret searches for who she is and what she truly wants.
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"Beyond the Shallow Bank grips the reader right from the horrifying scene at the beginning to its magical end.
"The book presents a complex picture of Margaret Talbot, an early twentieth century artist. The death of her child at birth has rocked her marriage, and apparently turned her husband away from her. Margaret has ambitions beyond the illustrations she makes for her husband's journalism. She wishes to become a painter in the 19th century mold... And above all she wants to control her own life and to be free of the constraints that locked women of her time into conventional subservience.
"The wonderful romantic plot of the book with its magical twist and turns gives substance and resonance to Margaret's multiple dilemmas. She is tempted by a love affair with a young man of artistic talent, which exposes to her at the same time her own desperate ambition to become a "real" artist. But she also comes to recognize in herself the power that she really has, to cease lying to herself, to overcome the ancient accusation of witchcraft against powerful women, to make the choices she really needs to make.
"Beyond the Shallow Bank contains descriptive passages of the sea which are wonderfully poetic. The writing in this book has both depth and psychological complexity, as well as humour, in the interactions of its large cast of village characters. Perhaps best of all, for the lifelong reader, it is a book to sink into, put down reluctantly, and wonder about long afterwards."
Susan Haley, Ph.D.
Author of Petitot and Getting Married in Buffalo Jump (made into a TV movie)