Request #282 From Elayne

I have one that’s been a head-scratcher. My mom checked it out from the library, I read just enough of it to get hooked, but she hated it so didn’t keep it long enough for me to read more.  As I recall it centers around a rather isolated community who lives either on an island or a sparsely inhabited seascape area. Main character is a “medicine woman” type of person, whose love interest is out to sea. She’s being wooed by someone she doesn’t like, but because of the community’s laws/customs, if her man doesn’t come back within a certain period of time she’ll have to marry the smarmy dude. Anyway, meanwhile, she’s doing her medicine thing. The community has a very low survival rate for infants, and newborns/new mothers are kept fairly isolated for ?a month? after the birth, during which time most infants die. The mother is then expected to act like nothing happened. The MC’s best friend loses an infant this way, and the MC is a little confused at why her friend is grieving so deeply, because after all it was expected that the baby would die. Their falling out leaves the MC unsupported when her love interest doesn’t return as expected.  I think there’s a hint of magical realism, and I don’t recall that it was tied to any real-world place or time, although the vibe I got was maybe mid-1800s far north Atlantic – Outer Hebrides, Faroe Islands, that type of setting. I’ve been asking for years with no joy.