Light Book

Set on a tiny island off the Isle of Man in 1831, Light is a family drama that reads like a pulse-pounding thriller. Sisters-in-law Lucy and Diya are raising their children together far from prying Victorian eyes, even as they dread the day the outside world will come to their island. That invasion arrives in the form of a surveyor and his assistant, sent to the remote outpost because a new lighthouse must be built and, according to custom of the time, a man must be found to replace the current lighthouse keeper, Lucy. That Lucy does a man’s job and Diya turns out to be a highly educated Indian woman shocks and confuses the men, but soon romance blossoms. Faced with banishment from the only home she’d ever known, Diya’s hot-headed daughter attempts a terrible act that may lead the family to ruin. With an assured eye for capturing the alien beauty of the island, Margaret Elphinstone creates an empathetic and compassionate tale of two singular women coming to terms with a sea change in their lives.

Publishers Weekly

Elphinstone's inert ninth novel (following Gato) is set in 1831 on Ellan Bride isle, "hardly more than a rock with a strip of green, surrounded by the silvery sea," off the more populated Isle of Man. Lighthouse keeper Lucy inherited the job-at two-thirds salary-when her brother Jim was killed in a storm five years earlier. Jim's India-born widow, Diya, has two children, Breesha and Mallay, growing up as siblings to Lucy's out-of-wedlock son, Billy. Lucy, scarred by past love, keeps the ancient lighthouse lit each night, as her brother and father did before her, while the educated Diya tends the garden and gathers puffins from their burrows, dreaming of her childhood in India. But when handsome, reserved Archibald Buchanan and his kind, assistant, Ben Groat, suddenly arrive to survey for a new lighthouse, the women face changes and choices. In alternating chapters, Elphinstone renders the solitude of the two women amid the salt air and crashing waves, along with the ambitions and fears of Archibald and Ben. Aiming for stark, the results are static. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.