Sea Bean

October 1, 2024
In this hybrid memoir, Huband recounts her experiences beachcombing in the Shetland Islands. After moving from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, with her family, she struggled to find her footing in a community that thrived on weather extremes. While reeling from powerful storms, Huband also comes to grips with a painful chronic illness and the struggles of a young mother whose husband is gone for unpredictable periods flying helicopters to offshore oil platforms. Seeking both connection and purpose, she volunteered for Shetland's beached bird survey and became intrigued with the environmental issues revealed on the beaches and, specifically, with finding an elusive sea bean (a drift seed that can wash ashore in northern climates). She researched the seed's scientific and folkloric history, pondering how it has woven its way into various northern histories while remaining distant from Shetland's own rich cultural fabric. Traveling to various Shetland beaches and the Faeroe Islands allowed her to write more about how other communities embrace their unique relationships with the sea. Tender and thoughtful, Sea Bean is a quiet treasure.

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October 28, 2024
Nature conservationist Huband’s beautifully written debut interweaves reflections on her physical and mental health struggles with musings on the natural world. In 2011, Huband moved to Shetland, Scotland, for her husband’s work as a pilot. There, she became pregnant with the couple’s second child and experienced immobilizing pain, leading to a diagnosis of inflammatory arthritis. Worn down by the pain and feeling trapped, Huband began taking walks to clear her head. During one, she noticed the corpses of two seabirds, leading her to volunteer for the Royal Society of the Protection of Birds to monitor such deaths. That work required her to take long walks on the beach, and Huband’s encounters with the local flora and fauna sent her down research rabbit holes about subjects including shark eggs, witchcraft, and plastics pollution. Eventually, she put together a wish list of items she hoped to come across on her walks, including the sea bean of the title, “a type of drift seed that sometimes washes ashore in a cold northern climate where they cannot naturally grow.” Huband’s knack for metaphor extends beyond the sea bean—a colony of terns becomes “a swirling cloud of white that takes on a maleficent form.” Such rapturous language, combined with Huband’s infectious curiosity about the world around her, make this sing.

Starred review from December 20, 2024

When naturalist Huband moved to the Shetland Islands with her family, she faced challenges as a new mother with a recurring illness. She found walking the area's coastline soothing and purposeful, a way to connect her former career as a marine conservationist and her new work as a nature writer. An avid beachcomber, she sought out bottled messages, driftwood from Canada, egg cases, and, most of all, tropical seeds that drifted north, known as "sea beans". She also joined in other activities to explore her new ecosystem; for example, she learned how to refloat stranded whales and porpoises and how to collect research data on seabirds. A keen observer of winds and tides, she gathered local folklore of the environments she traveled through as well. Huband's debut book (a Waterstones Best Book of 2023 in the UK) notes the increasing severity of storms, the effects of wind farming on the Shetland Islands, the precariousness of health care in remote locations, and how oil pollution and plastic shape the shoreline. In short, Huband searched for small bits of treasure and found a community. VERDICT With her 10-plus years of experiences on Shetland and other islands, Huband's descriptions of her wanderings are healing and vital. Highly recommended for nature and travel readers.--Catherine Lantz

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