Skin of the Sea

Simi is a mami wata, one of the mermaids who gather the souls of those thrown from slave ships and carry them home to the Supreme Creator. She was once a human girl, and she is the only one of her kind who still remembers her human life. When she finds a boy alive in the water, she saves him, and in doing so breaks the one law her existence rests on.

Saving Kola sets a bargain in motion. To undo the harm and protect the other mami wata, Simi must travel through the world of the Orisa and the human one, from the sea to the West African coast, and answer for what she has done.

Natasha Bowen's debut, the first book in the Of Mermaids and Orisa series, weaves West African mythology and Yoruba cosmology through a story set against the transatlantic slave trade.