STOLEN BEACH - Joanne Harris Book

Nestled on a small island off the Atlantic coast, two communities live back-to-back. While La Houssinière has transformed into a prosperous city thanks to the tourism brought by the island's only beach, Les Salants remains stuck in time, inhabited only by fishermen and sailors who, like their lives, are rough and bitter. Mado was born in Les Salants but soon left with her mother for Paris. After her mother's death, the young woman decides to return to the island of her childhood and reunite with her father. But returning to the past is not easy. The island, constantly swept by harsh winds, holds within it a whole universe of mysteries and contradictions, inaccessible to an 'outsider.' Yet, strangely, this does not seem to be the case with Flynn, a young Irishman who, despite being a newcomer, is the target of everyone's affection and trust, even that of Mado's father, a man whose heart is closed to the world and who stubbornly remains in a sepulchral silence. Faced with a closed, superstitious community bent on keeping ancestral hatreds alive, Mado decides to defy fate and the tides and manages to overcome the pride and beliefs of Les Salants' inhabitants. Together, they will try to change the village's future and their own destiny. For Mado, this will be an incursion into love and the (re)discovery of family and community values. Can a sandcastle survive the tides?