Beyond the Bright Sea

Like those of the other main characters in the novel, Crow’s background is a mystery. Found by Osh just hours after her birth, Crow spends the novel discovering and understanding her origins, and then coming to terms with the fact that she was born on Penikese Island’s leper colony. Raised by her adoptive father Osh and adoptive mother Maggie, and shunned by the residents of neighboring Cuttyhunk out of fears that she may have leprosy, Crow struggles to find a sense of belonging and identity.

Crow’s curiosity and courage help her make sense of scant clues about her background, connecting details like the Cuttyhunk residents shunning her “as if they were afraid” (6) with Maggie’s stories that the leper colony was racially diverse—as Crow reframes it to Osh, her ancestors on Penikese came “[f]rom Islands off Africa. Off South America. Where people have skin more like mine than yours” (128). Ultimately, her curiosity steers her in the right direction: She digs up both details about her biological family and literal buried treasure.

A good heart and sense of justice guide Crow’s actions. She is consistently mindful of Osh’s and Maggie’s feelings, and, more broadly, her empathy for the former inhabitants of the leper colony grows even before she has all of the details about her connection to it.