And finally…the review you’ve all been waiting for…ahem…my Number One Historical Fiction Pick of 2016! (Now a major motion picture, which I am going to watch tonight!)
Maybe this was my favorite because it’s the most recent one I read. (Like, I just closed the back cover before I composed these four posts.) It’s also the only one I read almost straight through–two sittings. When you homeschool, that’s pretty much straight through. (Sorry, son! We’ll catch up tomorrow!) Amazing. Excellent. I can’t wait to finish this post and start watching.
One more time, I’m borrowing the official blurb…
After four harrowing years on the Western Front (WWI), 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, 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, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and 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.
This one is so compelling, I can’t even tell you. I had to keep reading to find out what would happen to Tom and Isabel next! But don’t listen to me. Go grab it off Amazon.
That concludes my Top Four list. Look up a few of them and enjoy the rest of your Christmas break. I’ll see you next year!
Now, where’s that remote control…?
The Light Between Oceans, by M. L. Stedman
I loved this book! Happy New Year and here’s to more good books from you in 2017!!
Thank you, Darlene. Hope your 2017 is super and productive, too!
Trust your judgement. It does appeal to me. Your detail was spare, so now I’ll have to check it out. May check out the movie. Thanks for the suggestion!
It was so original, Pat, set off the Australian coast during the time between the wars. And the characters–you admire Isabel for her brave personality, then you feel her heartache when life happens. And then you spend the rest of the book holding your breath over her very poor choice, although you do understand it. Tom begins as a chivalrous, good-hearted WWI vet who’s been broken by the war. Yet he can’t stand to disappoint Isabel after all the miscarriages. He comes off as sort of a compassionate putz at that point, who then struggles with his own conscience. Very appealing cast, very emotional type of suspense. Ended up I couldn’t see the movie. Missed it in the theaters and couldn’t find a decent version to watch online. I’m waiting for it to come out at the late-run cheap theater near me. 🙂 Very worthwhile read. It was the same type of emotional drama as Nightengale, but with the Great War as a recent past context.
Perhaps in a few months it will be in your library. Or at a secondary theater.
Thanks for the info about the book!
That’s really neat. I think I will try to find this. 🙂
Whoops! I missed this comment somehow. It’s really well done, Erik. Living in Michigan I’ve read a few books featuring lighthouse keepers, but this was such a unique location and time period.