The Gracekeepers

Starred review from May 18, 2015
Logan (The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales) combines elements of folk and fairy tales with a near-future landscape in her debut novel. Rising sea waters have turned Earth into a series of archipelagos and its population into two types: landlockers, who control the dwindling resources on land, and damplings, who make their home on boats at sea. Callanish is a so-called gracekeeper, living in self-imposed solitude on an isolated island, taking payment in food and supplies for providing underwater burial rituals for damplings. Northâalong with her beloved dancing bear companionâis the star of a ramshackle circus that travels by boat from island to island. Both young women have secrets, and when they meet each other in the wake of a tragedy, they begin to imagine a possibility for a third kind of life, one that might bridge the divide between land and sea. The narration incorporates the voices of North and Callanish, other circus folk, and Callanish's family and acquaintances, building a convincing world. Filled with evocative images, including cruise ships transformed into itinerant revival meetings, and with classic fairy tale elements such as world trees and selkies, Logan's novel imbues what is essentially an environmental fable with the heft of myth.

March 15, 2015
A beautifully strange debut novel that draws upon folklore of the Scottish west and the isles. In Scottish author Logan's fictional world, the seas have risen and swallowed vast continents. Land, in its scarcity, has become a militarized commodity, populated by an aristocracy known as "landlockers" who have staked out their hereditary claim on the only land that remains, a series of archipelagos. The liquid world is left to the "damplings," who are forbidden to trespass beyond the high-tide mark without wearing a bell, banished to carve out harsh livings at the mercy of the sea. Out of this starkly original setting, less Waterworld and more Water for Elephants, come central characters Callanish and North. Dampling North and her pet bear are performers who live aboard the traveling circus boat the Excaliber, while Callanish is a landlocker who's been sent away to work as a gracekeeper, living a solitary life administering watery burials for damplings and caring for her graces: caged birds set out in "graceyards" to starve, marking a human being's suggested mourning period over the loss of a loved one. Logan is an award-winning short story writer and perhaps as a result never stays with one character long but shifts deftly between viewpoints, revealing her characters' desires and longings, secrets and limitations. Each point-of-view shift delivers a deeper perspective on the lives of North and Callanish as Logan unhurriedly builds the narrative tension into a billowing storm. "After that night's performance, the crew of the Excalibur felt the storm finally stirring to life....With glitter in their blood, coals in their chests, choking on their secrets, they sailed into the night. Soon they lost sight of land. The first drops of rain fell." The storm that rocks the Excalibur is both literal and metaphorical, as it brings the lives of North and Callanish crashing together and stirs up love, adventure, and a smoldering determination to find a sense of wholeness. Logan delivers a haunting, spare, and evocative debut.

May 15, 2015

In a world mostly covered by water, Callanish lives alone on an island, working as a gracekeeper tending watery graves. North is a performer with a floating circus troupe, until a storm brings the two women together and a chance to change their lives. VERDICT Drawing on Scottish folklore, this haunting debut fantasy is a literary Waterworld that will be in high demand by fans of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus and Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2015

This speculative tale is set in a water world with archipelagos of islands, where people are either damplings (born, raised, living, and dying on the water) or landlockers. The two mix sporadically and usually with distrust at events like religious revivals or when the circus comes on land. They also interact when there's a death, as damplings go to landlocked gracekeepers to bury their dead, a process that involves prayer and the body being placed in the sea with a captive bird marking the spot until the bird dies. The two groups collide when Callandish, a gracekeeper, is asked to bury a member of the Excalibur troupe and meets North, a dampling who works with a semi-tame tiger. Each recognizes a certain loneliness in the other and a need to somehow rectify past mistakes; ultimately, Callandish takes off to visit her mother and to find North, hoping to fulfill her need for companionship and forgiveness. The evocative descriptions of life as a gracekeeper and circus member or as a dampling or landlocker give the work a magical tone. The future Earth setting, in which oceans have risen so high that there are no continents, is something touched upon but not stressed by the author, helping readers to immerse themselves in the narrative. VERDICT Recommended for teens looking for speculative fiction with strong character development and a quiet plot, like those by Kent Haruf.-Laura Pearle, Miss Porter's School, CT

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2015
In a future when land is scarce and oceans are vast, there is an almost impassible breach between those who live on the islands, called Landlockers, and those who cast about on the sea, known as Damplings. The two groups keep their distance and view each other with suspicion and judgment. Punishing herself for a mistake made long ago, Landlocker Callanish has committed herself to the job of a Gracekeeper, sinking the dead of the Damplings in the doldrums. It is in this role that she first meets North, a Dampling who dances with a bear aboard a circus ship. North's parents died when she was young, and she has since been cared for by the fair and honest ringmaster, to whose son she is now betrothed. But North harbors a heavy secret, one that only Callanish can understand, and this will draw the two women together, even across the great divide. Into this forbidding realm, Logan mixes the traditional folklore of Scotland, creating a new mythic tale that is as beautiful and enchanting as it is dark. Lyrical descriptions vividly portray a fantasy world that seems at once futuristic and ancient and evokes the magical tone of Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale (1983).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)