The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

This beautiful book, The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman, illustrates how good people make poor choices. Isabel and Tom Sherbourne, a young married couple, are the lighthouse keepers and only inhabitants on Janus Rock, a tiny island off the coast of Western Australia. Isabel feels grief for the loss of her two brothers who died in WWI. Tom feels guilt that he killed enemy soldiers in the same war. Their quiet life on this island offers them solace. 

After three miscarriages, Isabel is bereft; Tom wants to make her pain go away. When a towboat with a dead man and a live baby appear on their little island, they care for the infant and soon consider her their daughter. Isabel represses thoughts about the baby’s birth mother while Tom wants to notify the proper authorities. They both have experienced so much loss; they create a narrative that allows them to live with themselves.

They name the little girl Lucy and the family lives peacefully. As the months pass, Isabel suppresses inconvenient questions, while her husband struggles with the morality of their decision. As the baby grows into a young girl, the guilt is too much for Tom. On a trip back to the mainland, he learns the identity of Lucy’s birth mother, Hannah Roennfeldt. Tom sends Hannah a note letting her know her little girl is safe. Soon, the tidy world that Tom and Isabel have constructed falls apart. Events cascade like a waterfall, and all the characters wrestle with what is best for Lucy. Tom and Isabel each experience betrayals and their old demons push into the present.

I admire this heartbreaking novel because Stedman does not create characters that are good or evil. She creates good people who struggle with conflicting emotions and desires. Her book beautifully explores the complexity of human emotion and the role that past pains have in shaping present choices. All the characters suffer and I feel empathy for each of them.