Island of Wings – Longlisted for the Orange Prize

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Lizzie follows her new husband to St Kilda with little more than trust to steady her. She is young, pregnant, and married to a minister she barely knows, setting foot on an island defined by isolation and endurance. For Neil, the posting is a test of faith and a form of penance. For Lizzie, it is an immersion into a world where language, companionship, and comfort are abruptly stripped away.

Island of Wings traces their marriage as it is shaped by loss, belief, and the relentless demands of the place itself. Life on St Kilda is harsh and precarious. Infant death is common. Homes are cold and crowded. Lizzie’s world narrows to her husband alone, even as his attention is pulled between pastoral duty and private doubt.

After the loss of their child, grief exposes the fragile fault lines already present between them. Set on St Kilda, the novel is attentive to faith under pressure and love tested by circumstance. It is not a story of heroism, but of persistence, asking what survives when ideals falter and survival itself becomes the work of each day.