The Ocean and the Bones

The Ocean and the Bones Synopsis

Friendship is tough in the Stone Age, especially when your best friend is part-Water Spirit…

In a pre-historic world where the spirits are fickle and the people are cautious, Little Meg is a Sunhealer's apprentice. She must learn to read the signs of nature and commune with the spirits to guide her people and keep them safe.

But when she keeps back the fingerbones of her deceased parents from a ritual, Little Meg knows that the resulting storm and the destruction it causes is entirely her fault.

As the rain clears, Meg discovers a strange girl washed up on the shore. Returning the girl to her island home is the only way to right her mistake and save her village.

What follows is an adventure across land and sea where friendships are tentatively made and generation-old legends are set right....

A letter from the author:

"Dear reader,

I am excited to introduce you to my children’s fiction debut The Ocean and the Bones.

I grew up in a family of archaeologists and spent every summer digging for clues in the dirt. This eventually led me to study archaeology at university, and what I was drawn to the most was prehistory; the time before written documents and paved streets and traffic lights, when the lives humans lived were so different – or were they?

I’ve always been interested in where we came from. I believe that learning more about our past can help us to challenge what we think we know and ultimately help us to treat each other better.

Although I love research, I found that I was being pulled in another direction; I wanted to write creatively, not just academically. I started writing poetry and for a while that took over. I left archaeology momentarily behind. But years later, I found I was being drawn back to prehistory.

Wherever I went, I’d  seek out stone circles and long barrows and imagine the people that would have built and used them thousands of years ago. I work a lot with children, delivering creative writing and arts and crafts workshops, and I wanted to write something that would inspire the same intrigue and wonder in them.

At the same time, I was reflecting on similarities between ancient worlds like the one Meg and Kalø’s story is based on, and the world that young people live in today. Climate change is causing oceans to rise and weather to become more extreme and unpredictable. People are fighting hard for equality and inclusivity, but society is divided and many act with hatred and suspicion towards anybody seen as ‘other.’ But if you look back into the past, ideas about difference fall away.

Our ancestry is a patchwork of people who’ve been forever moving and mixing, and not that long ago, Britain wasn’t an island, but connected to mainland Europe by a bridge of land known as Doggerland. Climate change caused rising sea levels, which around 8000 years ago flooded that land and caused us to separate.

I began to wonder, what if a tiny island had remained long after the rest of Doggerland flooded, and a lost community was stranded there for generations? If a young girl from a faraway place was forced away from her home, how would the people of prehistoric ‘Britain’ treat her when she arrived on their shores?

I hope you enjoy Meg and Kalø’s story and would love to hear what you think.

With best wishes,

Genevieve Carver"