PW # 208: YA Historical Fantasy: A COAT OF FUR AND MOONLIGHT

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor Name: Rosalyn Eves
Mentee Name: Cindy Baldwin
Title: A COAT OF FUR AND MOONLIGHT
Category: Young Adult
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Word Count: 87,800

Pitch:

Fifteen-year-old David has always been forbidden from the beach less than a mile from his doorstep. When he breaks his mother’s cardinal rule and sneaks down anyway, the selkie girl he meets will either give him the key to uncover generations of heartbreak behind Mom’s rules—or tear their family apart. Sarah Addison Allen meets THE SCORPIO RACES.

Excerpt:

David had lived his whole life on an island and never touched the sea.

Tonight, that was going to change.

Anger coursed through him as he walked away from his house, using long strides that moved the ground quickly beneath him. At the first side street he came to he turned left, and stopped.

The road below him unfolded in a gentle hill, black asphalt dusted with sand. And at the end of it—visible through scrubby trees and a few beachfront watermen’s cottages—lay the ocean.

The water was indigo in the evening light, so dark it was nearly black, the foam on the breakers gleaming silver. Wisps of cloud scudded above the horizon, already painted yellow in anticipation of the sunset that was on its way. A single pelican soared above it all, as graceful in the air as it was awkward on the land.

David had come here, to the intersection of Tressom’s Main Street and Atlantic Avenue, more times than he could possibly count. Even from this distance he could feel the sea pulsing in his blood, hear the crash and roar of the waves singing through him. Sometimes he’d sit at the top of Atlantic, not much worried about car traffic because nobody on the island drove anyway, and watch the water until it grew so dark he couldn’t see anything but the glint of starlight on the whitecaps.

But tonight, he went further.