The Light Between Oceans: A Novel

Front Cover
Simon and Schuster, 2012 - Fiction - 345 pages
The years-long New York Times bestseller and major motion picture from Spielberg’s Dreamworks is “irresistible…seductive…with a high concept plot that keeps you riveted from the first page” (O, The Oprah Magazine).

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
9
Section 3
16
Section 4
27
Section 5
35
Section 6
39
Section 7
51
Section 8
56
Section 21
172
Section 22
186
Section 23
195
Section 24
202
Section 25
208
Section 26
217
Section 27
228
Section 28
241

Section 9
64
Section 10
73
Section 11
85
Section 12
100
Section 13
106
Section 14
113
Section 15
118
Section 16
129
Section 17
137
Section 18
147
Section 19
158
Section 20
167
Section 29
251
Section 30
264
Section 31
272
Section 32
279
Section 33
291
Section 34
300
Section 35
308
Section 36
316
Section 37
327
Section 38
329
Copyright

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About the author (2012)

Originally from Western Australia, M L Stedman has lived in London for many years, where she worked as a lawyer. She first decided to try creative writing in 1997. In the years that followed she did a few writing courses, and some of her short stories were published in anthologies. The Light Between Oceans is M L Stedman's debut novel, draws inspiration from the landscape of her native Western Australia.

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