The Click Dictionary

About this book

In 2049, a sperm whale mother off Dominica repeated five clicks over her dead calf, and Marit Solvang translated them: 'Where is the one who was with us?' The sentence ended whaling, founded the Cetacean Standing Accords and made her the most quoted scientist of the century. Forty years later, Marit is seventy-four, funny, adored, and still telling the story of that morning from her house above Roseau. Then Josette Pierre, granddaughter of the skipper who drove Marit's boat, brings news from the archive: modern models no longer find a question in the coda. They find something else. With eleven days until the anniversary broadcast, Marit must listen again to the morning that made her, and to the memory of the one man who was there besides herself. But what if the sentence the world needed is not the one the whale said?