Secrets of Sable Island by Marcia Pierce Harding is a short work of youth fiction I picked up in Halifax last year. The story takes place in the spring of 1904 where fourteen-year-old Caleb is washed overboard during a storm. The ship he was on breaks apart at Sable Island, and he finds himself lucky to be alive, but with a broken leg. He is rescued by a horse who nudges him out of the tide. A man named Norse gives him shelter and treats his leg. The novel tells of Caleb’s adventures on the lengthy sandbar as he recovers from his injury. As the title states, there are secrets on this island, and plenty of them.
The ghostlike apparition on the cover is Marin, a real-life girl who lives on Sable. She doesn’t make an appearance until the tenth of 26 chapters. While Caleb is immobile as his leg heals, he develops a love of reading, a message the author no doubt was conscious of conveying to her audience. While the number of people living on Sable is very small, Harding has ensured that those who are there all have vast libraries.
I won’t spoil this review by revealing any of the island’s secrets, but they involve paternity and island residency. It is the latter that stretched credibility, as Norse was adamant in keeping himself hidden. He warned Caleb throughout the story not to tell anyone that he was there–or even the bigger news item: who it was that rescued and cared for him. With such a small population and only a thin strip of sand to call home, it seems a stretch for anyone on Sable not to know who else was living on the island.
My past reading about Sable Island has informed me about the horse population, and the policy of no human interaction with them. Thus the horses are truly wild, not tamed by humans for riding or for doing labour. I have read and seen documentaries that show, today, how the horses are left to fend for themselves, even in times of illness or injury, without any human intervention. Harding has portrayed the horses as interacting with humans, similar to behaviour one might encounter at a commercial ranch. I will give her the benefit of the doubt, though, for in 1904 it is possible that people treated the horses in that manner.
During the second half of the story a romance develops between the young teens and by the time a supply ship arrives to take Caleb to the mainland, he is reluctant to leave. We learned early on that he is an orphan, having lost his father and brother to a shipwreck and his mother to illness, so he is truly alone, with no desire to go back home. The story has a happy ending, as this is an outcome one could see well in advance.