An Amazon Charts bestseller. Dawn Conners's parents are famous for finding historic treasures, but she has a knack for losing things--her job, her boyfriend, and now, her reputation. Thanks to a mud-slinging exposé, Dawn's late great-grandfather is assumed guilty of stealing silver from a century-old shipwreck. Hoping to clear his name, Dawn returns to Starlight Cove, her idyllic hometown on Lake Michigan, where the doomed vessel sleeps beneath the beam of a ramshackle lighthouse. Her plan: remodel and sell the lighthouse while untangling the perplexing family mystery. Neither task is easy, especially once her well-meaning parents and the quirky locals--including nautical researcher and Starlight Cove's most eligible bachelor, Kip Whittaker--get involved. Despite their attraction, Dawn is reluctant to trust Kip, or any of the close-knit townsfolk. But as she pieces together the truth, Dawn's once-shuttered heart opens up. And if she's willing, the lighthouse might guide her to a place she never expected to find, where the past entwines with a bright new beginning.
From The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home comes a historical novel inspired by true events, and the extraordinary female lighthouse keepers of the past two hundred years. “They call me a heroine, but I am not deserving of such accolades. I am just an ordinary young woman who did her duty.” 1838: Northumberland, England. Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands has been Grace Darling’s home for all of her twenty-two years. When she and her father rescue shipwreck survivors in a furious storm, Grace becomes celebrated throughout England, the subject of poems, ballads, and plays. But far more precious than her unsought fame is the friendship that develops between Grace and a visiting artist. Just as George Emmerson captures Grace with his brushes, she in turn captures his heart. 1938: Newport, Rhode Island. Nineteen-years-old and pregnant, Matilda Emmerson has been sent away from Ireland in disgrace. She is to stay with Harriet, a reclusive relative and assistant lighthouse keeper, until her baby is born. A discarded, half-finished portrait opens a window into Matilda’s family history. As a deadly hurricane approaches, two women, living a century apart, will be linked forever by their instinctive acts of courage and love.
On a rocky island outpost off the coast of Maine, a young girl once kept the lighthouse lamps burning for days while her father was held on the mainland by a violent storm. This heroic incident forms the basis of Arielle North Olson’s dramatic story about young Miranda and her family. They have recently moved to the lighthouse—and the reader becomes acclimated along with Miranda to the harsh and demanding way of life she finds there. Illustrated in sweeping watercolors of blue and gray by Elaine Wentworth, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter will stir the hearts of readers as they watch Miranda struggle triumphantly against storm and rock and sea.
Once there was a lighthouse keeper called Mr Grinling... Mr Grinling LOVES his food, but - oh no! - he's not the only one who likes a snack and the local seagulls have started stealing Mrs Grinling's tasty treats...! Can Mr and Mrs Grinling come up with a cunning plan to keep those pesky seagulls away?
When Peter Hill, a student at Dundee College of Art, answered an advert in The Scotsman seeking lighthouse keepers, little did he imagine that within a month he would be living with three men he didn't know in a lighthouse on Pladda, a small remote island off the west coast of Scotland. Hill was nineteen, it was 1973 and, with his head fed by Vietnam, Zappa, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Watergate and Coronation Street, he spent six months on various lighthouses, "keeping" with all manner of unusual and fascinating people. Within thirty years this way of life was to have disappeared entirely. The resulting book is a charming and beautifully written memoir that is not only a heartfelt lament for Hill's own youth and innocence but also for a simpler and more honest age.
Once there was a lighthouse keeper called Mr. Grinling. At night time he lived in a small white cottage perched high on the cliffs, and in the daytime he rowed out to his lighthouse to clean and polish the light. When Mr Grinling locks himself out of the lighthouse, he tries everything to get back inside! Available for the first time as an e-book.
A beautiful memoir from John Cook, one of Tasmania's last kerosene lighthouse keepers. A story about madness and wilderness, shining a light onto the vicissitudes of love and nature. In Tasmania, John Cook is known as: 'The Keeper of the Flame'. John's renowned as one of the last of the "kerosene keepers": he spent a good part of his 26-year career in Tasmanian lighthouses tending kerosene, not electrical, lamps. He joined the lighthouse service in 1969, after a spell in the merchant marine. Far from reviling work on isolated islands such as Tasman and Maatsuyker, Australia's southernmost lighthouse, he discovered that he loved the solitude and delighted in the sense of purpose that light keeping gave him. He did two stints on Tasman, in 1969-71 and 1977, and was the head keeper on Maatsuyker for eight years. Tasman's kerosene light was a pressure lamp fuelled by two big bottles that had to be pumped up to 75 pounds per square inch (about 516 kilopascals): "It was the equivalent of pumping up a tyre every 20 minutes," John says. "Then you had to wind up the weights - they went down the tower and turned the prism around like a big clockwork. If the weights went all the way to the bottom, the light would stop. "The main thing was that 365 nights of the year you sat in that tower, 100 feet up, and you had to stay awake," John says of Tasman. "If you fell asleep the light would stop and then you were in trouble." Keepers took watches around the clock, in a system similar to that on a ship. Day watches weren't a chance to slack off: standing orders required the watchkeeper to look seawards at least every half-hour and to log sightings of any vessels, and their course, in the area. "But the main thing was there was always maintenance to do," John says. "Because Mother Nature was your boss. She'd blow gutters off, that sort of thing - she was always stickin' her bib in, and you were repairin' it." Tasman keepers also ran a herd of up to 500 sheep. They didn't have a freezer, so they'd kill and dress a sheep every fortnight. John supplemented his bulk stores, delivered every three months by the lighthouse supply vessel, with extras brought on the bi-monthly mail boat, and by keeping chooks, ducks and turkeys. "I never ran out of things to do," he says. "In my free time I used to do correspondence courses - I did navigation, diesel mechanics, business management and accounting." In 1977, keepers left the Tasman quarters forever. "I've got such strong memories of those places with people in them, and kids' voices rattlin' around," John says. "It breaks my heart to think about those places sittin' out there empty with no lights on."
In 2007, Caroline Woodward was itching for a change. With an established career in book-selling and promotion, four books of her own and having raised a son with her husband, Jeff, she yearned for adventure and to re-ignite her passion for writing. Jeff was tired of piecing together low-paying part-time jobs and, with Caroline’s encouragement, applied for a position as a relief lightkeeper on a remote North Pacific island. They endured lonely months of living apart, but the way of life rejuvenated Jeff and inspired Caroline to contemplate serious shifts in order to accompany him. When a permanent position for a lighthouse keeper became available, Caroline quit her job and joined Jeff on the lights. Caroline soon learned that the lighthouse-keeping life does not consist of long, empty hours in which to write. The reality is hard physical labour, long stretches of isolation and the constant threat of de-staffing. Beginning with a 3:30 a.m. weather report, the days are filled with maintaining the light station buildings, sea sampling, radio communication, beach cleanup, wildlife encounters and everything in between. As for dangerous rescue missions or dramatic shipwrecks—that kind of excitement is rare. “So far the only life I know I’ve saved is my own,” she says, with her trademark dry wit. Yet Caroline is exhilarated by the scenic coastline with its drizzle and fog, seabirds and whales, and finds time to grow a garden and, as anticipated, write. Told with eloquent introspection and an eye for detail, Light Years is the personal account of a lighthouse keeper in twenty-first century British Columbia—an account that details Caroline’s endurance of extreme climatic, interpersonal and medical challenges, as well as the practical and psychological aspects of living a happy, healthy, useful and creative life in isolation.
Orphaned at the age 10, Peter O'Banyon goes to live with his Uncle Billie, the keeper of the Port Hope Island Lighthouse in Massachusetts. There, Peter learns an astonishing truth of Billie's past, and the power of love. Through the years, WW II rocks his faith, and he returns to his young bride and to tragedy. In the final days of his own life, Peter needs to pass on the secrets to his own daughter. But to do it may take a miracle. Martin's Press.
