The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

The debut of a stunning new voice in fiction—a novel both heartbreaking and transcendent

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.

345 pages. (July 2012)

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Title Read-alikes: As Bright As Heaven by Susan Meissner; Latitudes of Melt by Joan Clark; The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin; We Must Be Brave by Frrances Liardet; The Lightkeeper's Wife by Karen Viggers; The Stars Are Fire by Anita Shreve; Ask Again, Yes by Mary Bet Keane; Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter; The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards; Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran; Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones; The Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline; and The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd.