An Island

South African writer Jennings’s unsettling U.S. debut explores a lighthouse keeper’s legacy of terror and tragedy. Samuel lives a quiet and isolated life on an island off the coast of an unnamed African country. Though he’s regularly visited by a supply boat, he has little contact with the outside world. His life is hard: he breaks rocks to maintain the sea wall and tends a small vegetable garden and a few chickens. He also buries the bodies of refugees who sometimes wash ashore. One morning he discovers a man washed up on the beach who is still breathing. He hides the stranger in his cottage when the supply boat comes, and soon the refugee’s presence triggers Samuel’s painful memories of torture as a political prisoner, and he grows more and more paranoid, convinced the man intends to displace him. With shifts to Samuel’s horrific past, Jennings shows his suffering and the compounded losses of family and country. Though some readers are sure to be upset by the shocking ending, Jennings succeeds at revealing what made her protagonist’s heart so dark, and his path to redemption so twisted. There’s little hope to be found here, but the author harnesses an undeniable power with this unflinching gaze into the abyss. Agent: Cecile Barendsma, Cecile B Literary Agency. (May)