The Light Between Oceans

by M.L. Stedman
personal hardcover 343 pages
genre: historical fiction, relationships

Where to begin? This was beautiful and painful. Tom Sherbourne has fought in WWI and come back alive to Australia. He becomes the lighthouse keeper out at remote Janus, a small island off the southwest coast. He falls in love with and marries Isabel, who suffers with three miscarriages. Then a boat comes to Janus with a dead man and a live baby. Tom wants to dutifully report it, but Izzy begs him to wait a day. The man is already dead and the baby needs to be cared for. Once the deception has begun, it leads places neither of them anticipate.

Jenifer gave this to me. I spilled coffee all over it. It dried, though it is brown and wrinkly. I cannot bear to get rid of it. It will live at the lake and be shared and re-read.

page 174 - After receiving a letter from his long-estranged father:
"It seemed a lifetime since Tom had spoken to this man. How it must have cost him, to write such a letter. That his father had made an attempt to contact him after their bitter separation was not just a surprise but a shock. Nothing seemed certain any more. Tom wondered whether his father's coldness protected a wound all along."   The phrase "nothing seemed certain any more" really resonated for me. Those of us who make up our minds too quickly sometimes have to stop and consider possibilities we've not allowed into our minds.

page 225 - When Tom is put in prison:
"He cannot reconcile the grief he feels at what he has done and the profound relief that runs through him. Two opposing physical forces, they create an inexplicable reaction . . . " The mix of grief and relief seems so artistic yet very, very real. Beautiful.

page 253 - After Bluey visits Tom in the prison and he thinks about Isabel and Lucy:
"Then he remembered Ralph's words - 'no point in fighting your war over and over until you get it right.' Instead, he sought comfort in perspective: in his mind's eye, he mapped out on the ceiling the exact position the stars would be in that night, starting with Sirius, always the brightest . . . The precision of it, the quiet orderliness of the stars, gave him a sense of freedom. There was nothing he was going through that the stars had not seen before, somewhere, some time on this earth." I think this struck me because I find it so easy to get caught up in life's dramas, yet there really isn't anything new under the stars. For me as a Christian, trusting that God is in charge and I just need to have faith makes the cares of this world fade away.

page 323 - Hannah remembers a conversation with Frank:
"You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things." What a great perspective!