Spooky, ethereal, and unsettling are the words that come to mind about this book, but strangely this is not a syfi, fantasy or a horror novel, instead it is firmly based in reality.

In the 1900’s three men stationed on a remote lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides, simply disappeared. No one knows what happened to them. Stonex took that historical incident and updated it, setting her story in the 1970’s in a tower lighthouse located on a rocky outcrop off the coast of Cornwall.

The story begins when the resupply boat with a relief keeper comes to the lighthouse tower. Situated on a rocky outcrop the lighthouse is just a tower with no land around it and rough seas which constantly batter the rocks around it. The keepers usually stay on the tower the entire time they are at the lighthouse, as even in calm weather waves can appear without warning and take a person out to sea. Although the resupply boat is usually greeted with excitement by the men on the tower, this time no one appears. The door to the tower is locked and when the men on the boat finally breakthrough the door they find the tower empty, a table set for two people not three, and the meal uneaten. The weather log kept by the principal keeper describes terrifying storms in the last few days, but the mainlanders have not seen any sign of a storm the entire week, much less the kind of storms described in the log. Another strange and unsettling detail is that all the clocks are stopped at 8:45.

An investigation is conducted but no real answers were found. Now some twenty years later, a writer comes to interview the women the men left behind asking questions and stirring up old memories and feelings that might have been best left alone. Weaving between the stories of the women and the keepers at the lighthouse, Stonex fleshes out the sequence of events that led to the discovery of the empty tower.

Stonex’s prose is quiet and subtle. The revelations in the plot seem to float to the surface creating a different kind of tension than the usual high drama that accompanies these revelations in other suspense novels. Stonex spends a lot of time with her characters, slowly developing and nurturing our understanding of their personalities and motivations. Interestingly, the writer, who unleashes the storm of revelations, is the least developed of the characters, creating a subtle but important distinction between the real actors of the drama and the person who serves as a midwife to the story. Stonex, draws us into the lives of the these people, letting us feel both the isolation and freedom of living apart from family and society. She draws us into the obsessions that can cloud our judgement and the ways that truth and lies, reality and illusion can become twisted, causing a darkness in our minds. Her question to us seems to be: What kind of courage does it take to tend the light when darkness surrounds us?

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 Out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Sharon, Keith, Marian and Lauren

Book Study Worthy? Yes

Read in e-library format.