A novel by J.F. Penn
Bones of the Deep
Some graves are meant to stay underwater.
Seven days of open Pacific aboard a beautiful old tall ship: for the paying passengers of the Southern Crosswind, the crossing from Fiji to Vanuatu is the escape of a lifetime.
But marine scientist Eve Calder has brought something aboard in a sealed crate: the skeleton of a saint that was never human, taken from a shrine deep beneath the waves on the orders of a billionaire collector.
First come the sharks, swimming in formation. Then three deliberate knocks on the hull in the night, asking to be let in.
The children of the shark god Dakuwaqa want their holy woman back, and an ancient debt is coming due that can only be paid in blood.
Into the Drowning Deep meets The Terror, on a tall ship in the South Pacific.
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The research behind the book
The voyage behind the book
In 1999, burned out at 24, Jo crossed this exact stretch of the Pacific by tall ship. It ended her corporate life and began this one.
Learn more →Dakuwaqa, the shark god
The real Fijian deity who patrols the reef passages: a fierce shapeshifter, appeased with offerings but never controlled.
The merfolk of myth were never gentle
Sirens, selkies, rusalki: across world myth, the beings at the sea's boundary are powerful, dangerous, and owed respect.
The last wilderness
We have mapped less of the deep ocean than the surface of the moon. The book's creatures live in that blank space.
Whose bones are they?
Museum shelves hold remains taken without consent. From Jo's MA in Death, Religion and Culture: what happens when the culture wants its bones back?
The Soren Larsen
The real tall ship behind the Southern Crosswind, still sailing out of Sydney Harbour today.
