Published in 2020, Adrienne Young’s Fable is a young adult maritime adventure novel and the first installment of the World of the Narrows series. The story follows the titular character, Fable, a 17-year-old who has been abandoned on a harsh island by her powerful merchant father after her mother tragically drowns. Determined to survive and claim her rightful place within her father’s trading empire, Fable must forge alliances and uncover family secrets to secure her future. The novel was selected as a Reese Witherspoon Book Club YA Pick and explores themes of The Quest for Autonomy, The Significance of Familial Legacy, and The Perils of Attachment Versus the Need for Belonging. In addition to her young adult novels, Adrienne Young has written adult fiction, including Spells for Forgetting and The Unmaking of June Farrow.

This study guide refers to the e-book edition released by St. Martin’s Publishing Group in 2020.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain depictions of domestic abuse, substance misuse, and homicide.

Plot Summary

Fable grew up on her parents’ ship, the Lark, which sank with her mother at Tempest Snare when she was 14. Her father, Saint, carved a map into her arm and then abandoned her on Jeval. Ever since, she’s been saving up the money she needs to leave the island and find him.

Now 18, Fable works as a dredger, diving for precious stones in the reefs off the coast of Jeval. She trades the gems to a helmsman named West, who warns her that she’s attracting too much attention from the other dredgers. A man named Koy attacks Fable and demands to know the location of the gem deposits. She strikes him in the head with an oar but saves him from drowning. After Fable gathers her savings from a hiding place on the island, she hurries to West’s ship, the Marigold, where she secures passage in exchange for all her coins and gemstones.

The members of West’s crew oppose taking a passenger, and Fable knows that she must find a way to ingratiate herself, or she might not live long enough to find her father and claim what he promised her. The Marigold’s crew consists of Willa the bosun, Paj the navigator, West the helmsman, Hamish the coin master, and Auster the stryker. While West is away from the vessel, the crew taunt the dredger by tossing a copper coin overboard. Fable accepts the challenge and succeeds in retrieving the coin to earn their respect.

When the Marigold reaches Dern, the crew discovers that a rival trader named Zola is also docked there. West forbids Fable from leaving the ship while the crew goes into the village. While the crew is away, Fable discovers that the Marigold is actually a shadow ship that does her father’s dirty work. She sneaks into town, but West sees her and tells her that she’s no longer welcome on his ship unless she does a favor for him. Willa pawned her jeweled dagger, and West asks Fable to get it back.

Fable succeeds, but she spends almost all the money that West paid her for the task. The next day, West and his crew trade with Dern’s merchants. After Fable identifies fake emeralds that fooled an experienced gem merchant, West angrily tells the crew to prepare for departure. West now realizes that Fable is a gem sage, someone with the rare, hereditary ability to sense precious stones. He urges her to be more cautious and then orders the crew to set sail despite an approaching storm.

Unbeknownst to Fable, West abducted a member of Zola’s crew in Dern because he hurt Willa. Willa seals the man inside a crate, and her crew members cast him into the sea. When the storm strikes, Fable works alongside the crew to keep the ship afloat until West urges her to go below deck. Although the storm damages the Marigold, everyone survives. Despite the secrets and lies between them, Fable senses a connection between herself and West. She reluctantly says goodbye to him when they reach the city of Ceros, wondering if she’ll ever see him again.

Fable sees her father on Ceros’s docks but doesn’t approach him. She promised never to tell anyone that she’s his daughter. Instead, she makes her way to Saint’s office, where she pockets a sea dragon pendant that was her mother’s prized possession. Fable wants a place on her father’s crew, but Saint tells her that the fortune in the Lark’s wreckage is her inheritance and the scar he carved into her forearm is a map to the treasure’s location. With that, he dismisses her. Fable is incensed that her father doesn’t want her in his life after she spent the last four years trying to reach him. West sends Willa to keep Fable safe, and the bosun finds her intoxicated in a tavern.

The next morning, Willa encourages Fable to join West’s crew. However, an emergency strikes when Zola slashes the Marigold’s sails and leaves West for dead in an alley. During the search for the helmsman, Fable realizes that Willa and West are siblings. West asks Saint to loan him the money to repair the ship, but Saint refuses to help West because he brought Fable to Ceros. Fable reveals that she knows a way for the crew to make enough money to pay back their debt to Saint. West is reluctant to let her join the crew—Saint will kill them all if something happens to her and further, West has feelings for her. However, he eventually agrees, on the condition that there won’t be any romance between them. The crew unanimously votes to let Fable join.

Fable trades the sea dragon pendant back to Saint for the money to repair the sails, but she feels guilty for manipulating him. All the licensed sailmakers in Ceros are too afraid of Zola to work for the Marigold, so the crew enlists the help of a tailor who owes Paj his life. On the night that the crew puts the new sails in place, Zola’s crew sets the Marigold ablaze, and the ship narrowly escapes Ceros’s harbor undamaged.

The Marigold sails to Tempest Snare. Using her scar, Fable guides the ship and when they find the Lark’s wreckage, West reveals that he knows how to dredge. He dives down to the cargo hold with Fable to retrieve the treasure, and they share a passionate kiss underwater. In keeping with their bargain, however, when they resurface they continue to act as though they have no romantic feelings for one another. The Marigold sails out of Tempest Snare safely and with enough treasure in the cargo hold to make all their fortunes.

The ship stops in Dern so the crew can exchange some of the treasure for coins. Afterward, they enjoy a lavish feast together. Alone in his quarters, West confesses to Fable that he fell in love with her at first sight, and they have sex. The next morning, Fable wakes up early and finds her father in a tavern. He warns her that West isn’t who she thinks he is, and she senses that she’ll never see Saint again when they part. On her way back to the harbor, Fable is attacked by Zola’s men and taken aboard his ship.