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.
I was utterly enthralled by Stedman's writing style and I was captured by the character's stories. I literally couldn't put this book down. I was swept away into their anxieties and I wasn't let go till the very end.
This book has a whole heap of downs. Like things can't go right for these characters and you immediately feel for them. You begin to sympathise with every one of the characters and after awhile, sympathising with every character creates unwanted anxieities because it every character can't possibly be satisfied. Oh the anguish! I felt so deeply for all the characters and I didn't know how they would make it through all of this. I was completely consumed with anxiety throughout this novel and then brought to an emotional mess at the conclusion.
I love sad books, books that make me feel something, and boy did this book make me feel.
What a masterpiece of dramatic writing!
Rating - 5 out of 5 stars
