Wow. This moving novel, packed with action *and* reflection, follows Leigh Welles’ return to her North Sea island home after the sudden death of her father. Set a few years after the end of WWII, Leigh returns just in time for the traditional October arrival of the “sluagh,” the monthlong onslaught of crows that has bedeviled the island for centuries. The war’s violence and grief appear to have fed the birds’ cruelty and frenzy, so that together the islanders and the sluagh are locked in a cycle of murder, fear, and retribution. When Huge McClare commits a surprising act of violence against a bird on the first day of their arrival, the stage is set for a working-through of all the unresolved feelings left after the war, for Leigh, her neighbor, Iain MacTavish, and the rest of the townspeople. WWII was a sort of rude awakening for these islanders and, in simple language, Seckel does a beautiful job of describing the longing for a simpler time *and* the things people will try to make things right. Leigh “suspected that nobody still left on this island really deserved the blissful ignorance that was prerequisite to that slow and simple life anymore,” but still she is compelled to fix what has gone wrong (58). A metaphor for a post-pandemic world, too.