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*LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARDS 2025**WINNER OF THE WINSTON GRAHAM HISTORICAL PRIZE 2026**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2026*’A huge talent’ HILARY MANTEL’A magnificent writer’ DOUGLAS STUART’One of the finest novelists of his generation’ THE TIMESThomas lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the grey, gloomy beach to scrape for shrimp; spending the rest of the day selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and scum, pining for Joan Wyeth down the street and rehearsing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but it remains a private dream.
. . A language of the sea washes over every page’ ROSS RAISIN’A tale so richly atmospheric you can almost taste the tang of brine and inhale the sea fog .
. . [Wood] transforms the quotidian into the poetic, making the exactitude of each task sing on the page’ GUARDIAN‘Wood is up there with the very best.
He packs more poetry into his opening paragraph than many a Booker-winner achieves in their entire oeuvre’ JOHANNA THOMAS-CORR, THE TIMES’Seascraper shimmers, salt-flecked and rippling’ SPECTATOR
