The Light Between Oceans

Summary (from the publisher): A captivating, beautiful, and stunningly accomplished debut novel that opens in 1918 Australia - the story of a lighthouse keeper and his wife who make one devastating choice that forever changes two worlds.

Australia, 1926. After four harrowing years fighting on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns home to take 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 debut 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.  

Review: Set in Australia in 1926, this captivating novel follows the life of WWI veteran Tom Sherbourne who returns home to Australia to take a job as lighthouse keeper on the isolated Janus Rock. Before he departs for Janus, he falls for the young and beautiful Isabel, who joins him on the island as his wife. Yet Tom and Isabel's lives are shattered by the loss of three pregnancies, which leaves Isabel devastated and despondent. So it seems like a miracle when a boat washes up on the remote island carrying a dead man and a tiny, living baby. Despite Tom's misgivings, the two adopt the baby and name her Lucy, passing her off as their own child that Isabel had already lost to stillbirth in isolation on the island. Yet when the two finally return to the mainland two years later, the far reaching consequences of their choice and the other lives affected alter the course of the previously idyllic family of three.

This was an absolutely beautifully written, heartbreaker of a novel. The writing was lovely, such as when Stedman continues an earlier metaphor about lives being woven together like fabric, by saying, "And Janus Rock, linked only by the store boat four times a year, dangled off the edge of the cloth like a loose button that might easily plummet to Antarctica" (25). The remote island setting helps propel the novel forward since the isolation and raw power of nature force Isabel and Tom to rely wholly on each other. It's little wonder that in this strangely distant world where each is all the other has that they would make a choice that would ultimately test their marriage in an unimaginable way.  

Stedman does an excellent job of making each character sympathetic. In a realistic twist, there is no true 'happy ending' possible for any of the characters. In turns, the reader is shown how devastating the consequences are for Tom, Isabel, Lucy, Isabel's parents, and Lucy's biological family. This novel explores the limits and endurance of love, the question of truth, right versus wrong, the meaning of motherhood and family ties, and the fickle nature of suffering and loss.

Stars: 4