The Light Between Oceans

The years-long New York Times bestseller soon to be a major motion picture from Spielberg's Dreamworks that 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. If Tom Sherbourne had wanted tranquility, he seemed to have found the perfect place on Australia's Janus Rock. As lighthouse keeper on this remote island, he and his young wife Isabel had found a home where he could free himself from the painful memories of four hellish years on World War I's western front. As he healed, there was one new cause of great frustration though; after his wife's two miscarriages and a stillbirth, their dreams of a family appeared to have dissolved. That changed, however, when a small boat washed ashore carrying a corpse and a living baby. With that shipwreck discovery, decisions must be made that will radically change several lives. An artfully written debut novel not soon to be forgotten; now in trade paperback and NOOK Book. - Sublimely written, poetic in its intensity and frailty...This is a simply beautiful story that deserves the praise and wide audience it's receiving. A stunning debut from a new voice that I can't wait to hear again. - Karen Brooks. Told with the authoritative simplicity of a fable...Stedman's intricate descriptions of the craggy Australian coastline and her easy mastery of an old-time provincial vernacular are engrossing. As the couple at the lighthouse are drawn into and increasingly tragic set of consequences, these remote, strange lives are rendered immediate and familiar. - The New Yorker. Lyrical...Stedman's debut signals a career certain to deliver future treasures. - People. A beautifully delineated tale of love and loss, right and wrong, and what we will do for the happiness of those most dear. - The Boston Globe - Tova Beiser. Elegantly rendered...heart-wrenching...the relationship between Tom and Isabel, in particular, is beautifully drawn. - USA Today - Elysa Gardner. "Irresistible...seductive...a high concept plot that keeps you riveted from the first page."-Sara Nelson, O, the Oprah magazine. "An extraordinary and heart-rending book about good people, tragic decisions and the beauty found in each of them."-Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief. "M.L. Stedman's The Light Between Oceans is a beautiful novel about isolation and courage in the face of enormous loss. It gets into your heart stealthily, until you stop hoping the characters will make different choices and find you can only watch, transfixed, as every conceivable choice becomes an impossible one. I couldn't look away from the page and then I couldn't see it, through tears. It's a stunning debut."-Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It. "M.L. Stedman, a spectacularly sure storyteller, swept me to a remote island nearly a century ago, where a lighthouse keeper and his wife make a choice that shatters many lives, including their own. This is a novel in which justice for one character means another's tragic loss, and we care desperately for both. Reading The Light Between Oceans is a total-immersion experience, extraordinarily moving."-Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane and Untold Story. "Haunting...Stedman draws the reader into her emotionally complex story right from the beginning, with lush descriptions of this savage and beautiful landscape, and vivid characters with whom we can readily empathize. Hers is a stunning and memorable debut."-Booklist, starred review. "[Stedman sets] the stage beautifully to allow for a heart-wrenching moral dilemma to play out... Most impressive is the subtle yet profound maturation of Isabel and Tom as characters."-Publishers Weekly, starred review. "The miraculous arrival of a child in the life of a barren couple delivers profound love but also the seeds of destruction. Moral dilemmas don't come more exquisite than the one around which Australian novelist Stedman constructs her debut."-Kirkus Reviews, starred review. "This heartbreaking debut from M L Stedman is a gem of a book that you'll have trouble putting down"-Good Housekeeping. "This fine, suspenseful debut explores desperation, morality, and loss, and considers the damaging ways in which we store our private sorrows, and the consequences of such terrible secrets."-Martha Stewart Whole Living. "As time passes the harder the decision becomes to undo and the more towering is its impact. This is the story of its terrible consequences. But it is also a description of the extraordinary, sustaining power of a marriage to bind two people together in love, through the most emotionally harrowing circumstances."-Victoria Moore, The Daily Mail. "A love story that is both persuasive and tender..."-Elizabeth Buchan, The Sunday Times (UK). "What an extraordinary book this is. Tom, traumatised on the western front, takes a job as lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, 100 miles off the Australian coast between the Indian and Southern oceans, where he hopes that the vast surrounding emptiness will bring him peace. When after three years and as many miscarriages his wife hears a baby's cry and discovers a dead man and a baby in a washed up dinghy, she feels her prayers have been answered. The ensuing tragedy is as inevitable as Hardy at his most doom-laden. And as unforgettable."-Sue Arnold, Guardian - From the Publisher. In Stedman's deftly crafted debut, Tom Sherbourne, seeking constancy after the horrors of WWI, takes a lighthouse keeper's post on an Australian island, and calls for Isabel, a young woman he met on his travels, to join him there as his wife. In peaceful isolation, their love grows. But four years on the island and several miscarriages bring Isabel's seemingly boundless spirit to the brink, and leave Tom feeling helpless until a boat washes ashore with a dead man and a living child. Isabel convinces herself--and Tom--that the baby is a gift from God. After two years of maternal bliss for Isabel and alternating waves of joy and guilt for Tom, the family, back on the mainland, is confronted with the mother of their child, very much alive. Stedman grounds what could be a far-fetched premise, setting the stage beautifully to allow for a heart-wrenching moral dilemma to play out, making evident that "Right and wrong can be like bloody snakes: so tangled up that you can't tell which is which until you've shot 'em both, and then it's too late." Most impressive is the subtle yet profound maturation of Isabel and Tom as characters. Agent: Susan Armstrong, Conville & Walsh. (Aug.) - Publishers Weekly. Told with the authoritative simplicity of a fable...Stedman's intricate descriptions of the craggy Australian coastline and her easy mastery of an old-time provincial vernacular are engrossing. As the couple at the lighthouse are drawn into and increasingly tragic set of consequences, these remote, strange lives are rendered immediate and familiar. - The New Yorker