From the acclaimed author of The Stardust Grail comes the epic tale of two sisters who sail across oceans to find their missing third sister—and Earth’s environmental salvation.
Cannibalism, mention of suicide.
In Earth’s not too distant future, seas consume coastal cities, highways disintegrate underwater, and mutant fish lurk in pirate-controlled depths. Skipper, a skilled sailor and the youngest of three sisters, earns money skimming and reselling plastic from the ocean to care for her ailing grandmother.
But then her eldest sister, Nora, goes missing. Nora left home a decade ago in pursuit of a cure for failing crops all over the world. When Skipper and her other sister, Carmen, receive a cryptic plea for help, they must put aside their differences and set out across the sea to find—and save—her. As they voyage through a dying world both beautiful and strange, encountering other travelers along the way, they learn more about their sister’s work and the corporations that want what she discovered.
But the farther they go, the more uncertain their mission becomes: What dangerous attention did Nora attract, and how well do they really know their sister—or each other? Thus begins an epic journey spanning oceans and continents and a wistful rumination on sisterhood, friendship, and ecological disaster.
Don't just take our word for it...
“Kitasei demonstrates her range in this moving portrayal of sibling dynamics set in a disturbing near future… Kitasei pays as much attention to her protagonist’s nuanced inner life as to the page-turning apocalyptic plotline, creating a tale that feels both intimate and expansive. It’s an impressive feat.”
– Publishers Weekly, starred review 🌟
“A quiet but riveting story about life on a changing planet, this novel offers a realistic picture of the future we may experience, while never straying from the characters’ inner journeys and love for sailing at the heart of the novel… Wonderfully constructed and told, the sisters’ world is one full of both darkness and hope, as humans continue to find their way in a crumbling, changed environment. Luminous, credible, and engrossing from beginning to end.”
– Kirkus, starred review 🌟
“Set in a watery world of environmental catastrophe, Saltcrop is a moving testament to the distant places we’ll sail to in order to salvage the Earth and our families. Part eco-thriller, part sisterhood epic, Kitasei has written an unforgettable novel that teems with big ideas and abundant heart.”
– Michelle Min Sterling, New York Times bestselling author of Camp Zero
Taste the very first page
The day Skipper decides to go and find her oldest sister, Nora, all the mussels are stolen from Gull Gang Rock.
Skipper picks her way along the shore. The rocks are slick with wet seaweed and the retreating ocean tide. Everything gleams in the fading orange-yellow light. Soon it will pour, and she regrets not wearing her rain jacket. She is twenty-two and generally considers herself invulnerable to things as ordinary as weather.
Gull Gang Rock is a particularly large rock jutting out among the waves beneath a ruined wooden pier. Carmen, the middle Shimizu sister, gave it its name when they were younger, based on all the brassy-voiced laughing gulls that hang out there.
Carmen loves naming things. It’s her way of claiming ownership, and it’s annoying, but the names stick anyway.
For example, Skipper’s real name is Rosa, but it’s been many years since anyone has called her that. When they started fixing up their boat, Carmen began calling her Skipper as a tease, because it was all…
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