The Moorings of Mackerel Sky

A Novel

By: MZ

Narrated by: MZ

Debut novelist MZ marries fantasy with the everyday in her contemporary novel of a Maine lobstering town whose local myths come to life.

"Arresting, lyrical, and deeply emotional, MZ’s debut will captivate readers of Alix E. Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January (2019)." (Booklist, starred review)

“An enchanting tale of grief and hope...as powerful and sparkling as the sea.” (Emily Jane, best-selling author of On Earth as It Is on Television)

They say Mackerel Sky was founded when Captain Burrbank first saw Nimuë the mermaid and forgot the sea. Stricken by love, he moored his tall ship and made camp on the highest cliff, hoping to forever gaze upon her beauty. That camp became a settlement, the settlement a town, the town a community both blessed and cursed by their tempestuous affair.

Three hundred years later, the legend of the mermaid and the captain who loved her still invigorates and haunts the inhabitants of the small Maine lobstering town. Take gruff widow Myra Kelley, who finds herself the de facto guardian of Leo Beale and knows his drunken antics are really attempts to escape an opiate-addicted mother and her boyfriends. Or Derrick Stowe, the town’s star pitcher, who wants nothing more than to read his mother’s musings on mermaids, write poetry to his secret boyfriend, and come out to his father, though he will learn how devastatingly small small towns can be. Or the oft-institutionalized Manon Perle, whose gorgeous, detailed quilts of the Mackerel Sky legend belie the terrible pain of—as she claims—having given her only child to the women in the waves.

In this close-knit town famous for its infamous mermaids, community is built through love and lore—willful elements that the townsfolk will have to harness if Mackerel Sky is to endure for another 300 years.

©2024 Emily Zack (P)2024 Audible, Inc.

Fantastic telling of an excellent story!

A refreshingly diverse cast of characters with storytelling that brings back fond memories of the best and most challenging parts of coastal Maine. Full of magic and heart, I loved it!

We all need a Myra in our lives

This is the best modern fantasy novel I’ve read/listened to. Thank you MZ.

The Moorings of Mackeral Sky starts off as a story about modern life in a small town on the coast of Maine. The characters and their struggles with grief and loss and the hardships of everyday life are so poignant. I felt so deeply for them all.

Interspersed with the stories of the townsfolk are the legends of the town’s own history involving mermaids and the sailor who founded the town.

The ending is truly masterful, weaving all of this lore and these lives together into a very emotional modern fantasy payoff.

MZ’s characterizations in the audiobook are *perfect* midcoast Maine accents and matter-of-fact turns of phrase. Her prose and poetry is lyrical and alliterative and a joy to listen to.

I know this is going to be one of those books I go back to again and again.