Six Hours of Dry Land

About this book

Hazel Rafuse, sixty-two, walks tourists across the bottom of the sea when the world's highest tides drain out of Nova Scotia's Minas Basin. For fifty years she has not been able to see the Ebb Folk, the people who live under the Basin and come out with the tide. Then eleven-year-old Mo Saulnier, new from Halifax, who stammers on almost every word, chases Hazel's dog into the soft mud, and the mud lets go of her feet. The marsh has chosen a new Keeper, the gate at Willet's Marsh is failing, and the Long Ebb is eight weeks away. Mo can see what Hazel can't: an old man with a sharp chin waiting on the flats every low tide, holding something out to Hazel. Hazel was twelve once, too. What did she give away the last time the water went out and didn't come back?