Escaping foster care, two sisters encounter the natural—and supernatural—entities of the North American Great Lakes on an otherworldly quest homeward to the matriarchal commune where they were raised in this Gothic eco-horror novel for fans of Catriona Ward, T. Kingfisher, Kay Chronister, and Vincent Tirado.

The Great Lakes: Huron. Ontario. Michigan. Erie. Superior. Their waters teem with life. Humans have taken advantage of their natural resources for generations. After being poached, polluted, and poisoned for centuries, they have survived, forced to coexist with the toxicity that has tainted them. Thousands of sailors have lost their lives to shipwrecks on the lakes. In the winter, the lakes are at their most angry, and their most powerful. Shipwrecking storms and ravenous vampire fish are just the beginning.

Amidst this setting, teenage sisters Sylvie and Marie-Ève George run away from their foster home and stow away on a Great Lakes bulk freighter, kicking off a supernatural odyssey. The girls grew up isolated from society, on a secluded island on the St. Lawrence River. But after the government removes them from their mother’s care, Sylvie and Marie-Ève will do anything to get back home, including journeying 1,500 miles across the lakes. They face dangerous smugglers, foul-mouthed sailors, a matriarchal cult of witches—and the everpresent threat of the lakes.

Nature remembers, and it doesn’t forgive. Mr. Martin Williams, an industrialist with investment in every part of the lakes, has employed the George family for generations. His crimes against the Great Lakes are never forgotten, and trickle down through his bloodline. His choices ripple outward through time all the way to Sylvie and Marie-Ève.

About the haunting journey to find family and a place to call home, Allison Mick’s Dark Waves is a supernatural adventure combining the social commentary of Octavia Butler and the multigenerational family drama of T. Kingfisher’s The Twisted Ones.