In the Scottish folktale of the Selkie, a seal woman climbs out of the sea by dark to strip off her outer layers and dance on the shore. Overcome by her beauty, a man hides her skin so she will be forced to stay on land with him. But the Selkie woman is gripped by a powerful longing, spending her days with her face turned towards the sea.

In Song of the Selkie, each of the three McFarland sisters follows suit, journeying from her “captive” self  back to her wild more authentic nature. The youngest sister, Frances, has eschewed the life of the body in pursuit of status as a professor in an Ivy League college in America. On the brink of securing tenure, she goes back to Scotland where she is forced to confront a part of herself that has all this time been in a death slumber. By contrast, her sister Lala, the “sexy one,” moves from man to man, in an endless quest for the creative person she always thought she could be. And the oldest sister, Eddie, bides her time among the fishermen she serves in the local pub, drawn by some inexplicable force back to the small island of Roansay from which their dead mother hailed. 

When the three sisters converge in their childhood home on the pagan festival of Hogmanay, all manner of demons from the past are set to let loose.