Wild Dark Shore

Rowan reflects on a conversation she had with her mother shortly before her mother died. Rowan asked her mother why they lived on a boat, and her mother explained that a flood destroyed their home and that they had had nowhere else to go. Rowan expressed her anger that her mother left her to care for three children at age 13, but her mother did not respond. She died soon after of cancer. Rowan resolves to no longer blame herself or her mother for what happened.

Suddenly, the mother whale is lifted up and carried out to sea with the tide. Dom embraces his children, and Rowan joins the group hug as well. Later, Rowan tells Dom that she has feelings for him, and they fall asleep together.

The next morning, the group returns to the seed vault to continue the work of saving the seeds. However, Raff stays behind because he reinjured his wrist saving the whales. In the vault, Rowan overhears Orly talking to himself. She also overhears Fen talking to Dom about something she is concerned about. They are all evasive when Rowan asks what is going on.

That night, Rowan awakens with a start. She realizes that the timeline of the story Dom told her about what happened to Hank does not make sense. Hank would not have left with the other researchers before his work in the seed vault was finished, and they could not have called for a different ship to collect him because the communications systems were broken. In other words, Hank would have been on the island when Naija, Tom, and Alex died, and he likely is there still. Rowan confirms her hunch by asking Raff how Alex died. When she learns Alex died by hanging, she realizes the blood in the cabin could not have been Alex’s.

Rowan returns to the seed vault. She examines the corner where Orly was talking to himself. She finds an air shaft with a ladder going down, hears Dom’s voice in the air shaft, and hides. She sees him emerging from the shaft. Once he leaves, Rowan climbs down the shaft to a door. She opens the door to a storage room and sees Hank sitting there.

Fen first met Hank when she was 16. She developed a crush on him. About a year later, Hank announced his plan to empty the vault and shut down the research center. Around that time, they had sex, which Fen, who was of legal age of consent, persuaded herself she desired, though the novel implies that Hank is manipulative and it was “not at all like how she imagined it” (243). Months later, Fen began to worry she was pregnant because she had not had her period. She went to the seed vault and found Hank dumping seeds out. When she told him she was pregnant, Hank gave an erratic speech about how his wife was right that everything would be destroyed, saying that there was no point in bringing children into the world.

As they walked along the shore, Hank suddenly shoved Fen’s head under water to drown her. However, Fen was able to escape, and Alex and Raff saw the attack and dragged Hank into the field hut. Soon after, Dom arrived and beat Hank to near death. Afterward, Fen told Dom that she and Hank had sex and that Hank wanted to “drown all the seeds” (248). She got her period two days later.

Dom was heartbroken when he learned what happened to his daughter. He tried to radio the authorities, but the communications systems had all been broken. He decided to hold Hank in the storage room in the vault until the ship arrived two months later.

Rowan is shocked to see Hank. Hank begs her to return later to release him and warns her not to trust Dom. Later, Rowan asks Raff if Dom was ever violent. Raff says that “everything Dom does is for his kids” (255). 

A storm arrives. Rowan comforts Orly during the storm even though she knows Orly is aware of Hank being locked in the storage room.

Dom goes to see Hank. Hank insists again that life on Earth is doomed. Dom retorts that they still have a choice whether to “add to that destruction or […] care for each other” (257). Dom then returns home, where Rowan tells him that their romance was a “mistake.”

That evening, Dom thinks about Claire. She was diagnosed with cancer while pregnant with Orly and decided to keep the baby rather than pursue treatment. During the birth, Dom had to choose whether to save Claire or Orly. In accordance with her wishes, Dom chose to save Orly, and Claire died.

Orly tells Rowan about the banksia plant, an Australian plant that only blossoms after a fire.

The next morning, Rowan tells Orly that soon the water in the seed vault will go down the airshaft to the storage room. She is getting ready to go to the vault when she hears Fen crying in the bathroom. Fen is in the tub with a painful, heavy period. Fen confesses that a few months ago, she thought she was pregnant, and Rowan realizes what Hank did. She comforts Fen and tells her that Hank is a narcissist.

Dom, Rowan, and Orly return to the seed vault. They gather the seeds that Orly picks out. Suddenly, the concrete starts to completely fail, and they have to leave. Rowan tells Dom that she intends to return to save Hank.

On the way back, Dom decides to help Rowan save Hank. He has to get an angle grinder to open the airshaft hatch at the top because it is too flooded to enter from the vault itself.

Back at the lighthouse, Rowan sees a ship offshore. As she offloads the seeds into the lighthouse freezer, she notices that the seeds are not food sources but instead some of Orly’s favorites.

Rowan goes down to the beach to return to the seed vault. It is storming. Dom is there loading his tools to return as well, and they each realize Orly is not with the other.

Orly goes to the storage room to save Hank, feeling responsible for what happened to him because it was Orly who destroyed the communications systems. He did so after noticing Hank’s worsening mental health: “[I]f anyone else started to notice how unwell Hank was becoming, they would definitely want to call a doctor” (272). As a result, Hank would not finish his work, and all the seeds would be lost.

Orly opens the storage room door, and the water rushes in behind him. He hits his head as he trips and falls, and in his daze, Hank leaves. He also closes the storage room door behind him, locking Orly inside.

Rowan and Dom race to save Orly. Rowan swims through the tunnel to the storage room, where she finds Orly. Meanwhile, Dom tries to open the hatch at the top of the airshaft. Rowan and Orly climb the ladder toward the hatch. The water rises toward them.

Fen goes to check on the seals. Much of the beach has been lost to the rising waters. The storm worsens, and she retreats to the boathouse. Hank is hiding there. He doesn’t seem to remember trying to drown Fen, but he lunges at her.

Raff has a feeling that something is wrong with Fen and runs to the boathouse.

Dom struggles with grinding away the metal welding the hatch shut. As he works, he realizes that the person he has been talking to all these years is not Claire but rather his “own monstrousness and nothing more” (284). He resolves to “free” himself from the guilt of choosing his son over his wife.

Fen and Hank tussle, and he falls into the water and is swept away. Fen grabs onto a pylon, and Raff hauls her back to safety.

Rowan realizes the water is rising quickly and that they may die. She tells Orly that after the brush fire, she checked a wombat burrow and found that it was full of creatures who had sheltered there to save themselves. Wombat adults plug the hole of the burrow with their buttocks to save the others, and Rowan likens this selflessness to that of Orly’s parents. She urges Orly to stay calm and tells Orly that she loves him and their family.

The water level rises to the top of the shaft, and Rowan begins to drown. She feels Orly run out of breath, too, so she puts her mouth on his and gives him the last of her oxygen. As she dies, Rowan feels Orly being lifted out and herself falling into Claire’s embrace.

Dominic saves Orly and gives Rowan CPR, but she is dead.

The ship arrives. Its crew works to scavenge everything from the island.

Raff resolves to play violin when his wrist heals—both because he loves it and because it will help him leave the punching bag behind. He decides to be strong for his family.

A week later, Fen, Raff, Dom, and Orly walk the island for the last time. They see the albatross’s chick survived the storm. Then, they sail away. The seals swim behind the ship, “their fins lifted in farewell” (296).

Before they leave, Dom takes a swim in a lake that Rowan liked and thinks about her.

Orly tells Rowan that she was mistaken that Shearwater has no trees. In fact, there are underwater groves of kelp that creatures like seals can shelter in during storms. He hopes Rowan is there now.