It was especially neat for me personally to read this book as someone who also grew up in rural Nova Scotia like the author, about 80% of the surnames in the book were like "oh yeah I went to high school with someone with that surname"
But this was more of a fun easter egg for a very gripping book
Not sure if we'll get to A Sweet Sting of Salt on Lingthusiasm bc @superlinguo.bsky.social doesn't read a lot of historical fiction (though I'd argue it could also be shelved under fantasy or romance...) but there are definitely some linguisticsy elements especially wrt learning a language
My grandfather’s family came through PEI and NS, doing genealogy is a nightmare. There are like four surnames in PEI and maybe only a dozen more in NS…