Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt

The eighth and final installment of the Seven Sisters series, the novel alternates between the diary of a mysterious man named Atlas, spanning from the 1920s to the 1990s, and a present-day voyage in June 2008, during which his seven daughters discover his true identity and history.

A prologue set in Siberia in 1925 introduces two young brothers who find a baby sparrow pushed from its nest by a cuckoo chick. The older boy crushes the bird, declaring it pointless to save something doomed, while the younger boy weeps and apologizes for his brother's cruelty.

In 1928, a mute boy of about ten is living with sculptor Paul Landowski's family near Paris. He refuses to speak or reveal his name, fearing that any words could betray his origins. He fled his homeland after his father left, promising to return but never doing so, and collapsed in the Landowskis' garden, where he was discovered. He bonds with Evelyn, the household's housekeeper, who becomes a maternal figure. When the family discovers his extraordinary violin talent, Landowski arranges an audition at the Conservatoire de Paris with a Russian émigré tutor named Monsieur Ivan. The boy chooses the name "Bo," inspired by the violin bow, and begins lessons.

The narrative shifts to June 2008. Merry McDougal, a fifty-nine-year-old Irish-New Zealander, reads a letter from a man named Atlas claiming to be her biological father. She is flying to join six adopted sisters aboard the superyacht Titan to lay a wreath for their adoptive father, "Pa Salt," who died a year earlier. Pa Salt's longtime lawyer, Georg Hoffman, reveals that Pa Salt's real name was Atlas and that a charcoal drawing in his study is a portrait of Merry's birth mother. Aboard the Titan, the sisters gather with their partners and Ma, their longtime guardian whose real name is Marina. Merry's son Jack and daughter Mary-Kate are already aboard. Merry reads Atlas's letter aloud, confirming she is Pa Salt's biological daughter. The sisters begin reading the diary.

Back in the diary, Monsieur Ivan sends Bo to an orphanage for socialization, where he meets Elle Leopine, a thirteen-year-old self-taught musician whose parents died in the Great War and the 1918 influenza epidemic. Bo and Elle fall in love. On Christmas Day 1929, Bo speaks aloud to Elle for the first time and reveals the secret governing his life: He is running from a boy named Kreeg Eszu, who believes Bo murdered his mother and stole a priceless diamond. Bo shows Elle the gem, hidden in a leather pouch around his neck.

The diary jumps to 1936. After a break-in at the Landowski house inadvertently reveals the diamond's existence, Bo and Elle flee Paris. They enroll at the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany, where they befriend Karine Rosenblum, a Jewish student, and her Norwegian boyfriend Pip Halvorsen, a talented composer. As Nazi persecution intensifies, Bo spots Kreeg in an SS uniform. Bo's lodgings are set on fire, which he believes is Kreeg's doing; he survives by jumping from a window but breaks his arm, ending his career as a professional cellist. The four friends flee to Bergen, Norway, and settle into a quiet life. When Germany invades in 1940, Karine is shot and killed by occupying soldiers, and Pip, devastated, takes his own life. Bo and Elle escape to Scotland, then find work at High Weald, a Kent country estate owned by Archie Vaughan. When Archie's son Teddy assaults Elle, they resign and relocate to a London bookshop owned by the family.

In 1949, Kreeg finds them and threatens violence. Bo and Elle plan to flee to Australia and marry aboard the ship, but on departure day Elle never boards. Bo finds her wedding dress on the dock with a note saying she has chosen to leave. Suicidal with grief, he is saved by a fifteen-year-old orphan named Sarah, whose blunt compassion convinces him life is worth living. Sarah helps him find work managing opal mines in the Australian outback, where he earns a fortune through grueling labor. After a mine collapse in which he rescues trapped workers, an Aboriginal healer named Yarran treats his injuries and tells him his soul carries deep pain but that he has much left to do.

Bo learns he has inherited wealth and a secluded peninsula on Lake Geneva from his grandmother. Visiting the land, he discovers two starving German-Jewish refugee children, Georg and his sister Claudia, camping there after escaping a concentration camp. He arranges for their care; Georg later becomes his lawyer. In Granada, Spain, Bo meets Angelina, a fortune teller with the bruja gift, a form of inherited spiritual sight. She tells him he will father seven daughters and that the first already walks the earth. Bo realizes Elle bore their child and left to protect the baby from Kreeg. He builds a grand hidden home called Atlantis on the peninsula and dedicates his life to searching for Elle and their daughter.

Over the following decades, Bo adopts six daughters, each connected to people from his past: Maia, the abandoned great-granddaughter of Landowski's assistant Laurent Brouilly; Ally, the rejected twin daughter of Pip and Karine's grandson; Star, connected to the Vaughan family of High Weald; CeCe, the orphaned granddaughter of Sarah; Tiggy, the daughter of Angelina's late cousin, born with the bruja gift; and Electra, born with an addiction to crack cocaine and left at a Harlem children's home with Bo's old business card. Bo names them after the Pleiades stars, gives them the surname D'Aplièse (an anagram of Pleiades), and adopts the alias "Pa Salt." In 1993, Maia begins dating Zed Eszu, Kreeg's son, and Bo recognizes a deliberate infiltration.

Aboard the Titan, the sisters absorb these revelations. Georg, pressured by Ally, reveals additional pages Atlas wrote near the end of his life. Star reads them aloud to everyone. The pages disclose that Atlas, diagnosed with heart failure, met Kreeg aboard Kreeg's yacht, the Olympus, near the Greek island of Delos in June 2007, intending to surrender his life to protect his daughters. Ma and Georg had staged a fake death announcement to shield the family.

The full history of the diamond emerges. Atlas's parents served in Tsar Nicholas II's household, and his mother Clymene was entrusted with a diamond belonging to the tsarina. During Atlas's birth in a railway carriage after the revolution, Kreeg's mother Rhea delivered the baby but secretly stole the gem. Rhea's Bolshevik lover later led soldiers to search for it; unable to find it, they beat Rhea to death. Young Atlas found her body, and Kreeg, arriving moments later, assumed the worst.

Kreeg reveals the cruelest truth: Elle did not leave Bo voluntarily. Kreeg abducted her at gunpoint on the dock, forced her to marry him, and imprisoned her at Argideen House in West Cork, Ireland. Elle, pregnant with Atlas's child, gave birth to a daughter. Kreeg told Elle the baby died and left the infant on a local priest's doorstep. This child is Merry. Elle died of influenza about three years later, never knowing her daughter survived. Atlas returns the diamond, forgives Kreeg, and relocates to Delos. The next morning, Kreeg is gone, having given himself to the ocean.

Ma confirms that Pa Salt is still alive on Delos. The sisters sail through the night. At sunrise, in a whitewashed bungalow, each daughter embraces their frail father. Merry enters last, and Atlas mistakes her for Elle due to the resemblance. She gently corrects him, and he tells her about her mother. Surrounded by all seven daughters, Atlas closes his eyes for the final time.

One year later, the sisters scatter his ashes on Lake Geneva. Georg reveals the diamond is hidden inside the armillary sphere, an ornamental astronomical globe at the center of Atlantis. The sisters decide to use its value to fund a charity helping orphans find families. Ally and Jack, who are now a couple, are expecting a baby, continuing Atlas and Elle's bloodline. As Merry departs by boat, she sees the figures of Atlas and Elle standing on a rocky outcrop, waving. She waves back, and they fade from view.