The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

This review can also be found in the Canon City Daily Record.


The Light Between Oceans is a complex tale, simply told, about a desire, a lie, and the hearts that break in consequence. In her debut work, M.L. Stedman creates a historical novel, defying obviousness and offering instead an intimate look at a man and a woman, both bearing deep wounds in post-World War I Australia. The events unfold against the backdrop of a harsh location - a lighthouse between the Indian and the Great Southern Oceans.

At times deceptively unaffected, and at times poetic, Ms. Stedman has done her research. Between the beautiful imageries of a land and sea that collide, she brings readers into a time and place where xenophobia is thick and controlling, solitude is desired by soldiers returning home, and a decision can wreak havoc for so many souls. Using the unique setting and its attending laws, a story is crafted; an ex-serviceman returning from war brings his bride to a remote lighthouse where he will be keeper and she will be his companion. After numerous miscarriages, their grief is deep and inconsolable. A dead man and an infant, wrapped in a sweater, wash up on Tom and Isabel's isolated shore and a choice made in despair offers them brief, incomplete happiness.

And then, of course, tides change, and secrets and lies can no longer be kept.

"On the day of the miracle, Isabel was kneeling at the cliff's edge, tending the small newly made driftwood cross." In this lovely romantic tale, questions arise. Can a tragedy also be a miracle? What makes a mother? Is deceit ever excusable - acceptable? Is love and loyalty more important than integrity? Shall we have faith in our own dreams and desires, or in what is or must be? What is grace - or betrayal? What does love really look like? What is the right decision after so many wrong choices?

In the telling of this story, Ms. Stedman has allowed readers to come to their own conclusions, even at times challenging a notion they once held as truth. The use of a vernacular peculiar to the area and time encourages readers to connect to each character and their dilemmas. Readers will be intrigued as they come to clear and definite conclusions as to what is right - what is just.

Waiting for the lies to come to light, waiting for an ending that leaves one satisfied and comfortable is difficult, but worth every page of this stunning and unassuming work. "The light will reappear" and the reader will be better for this journey into the hearts of a man and woman who dare to love a child


Photo Credit: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51zES0qTvqL._SX320_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Carrie Welton by Charles Monagan

Charles Monagan is an award-winning journalist, writer, editor, and lyricist. Carrie Welton may just be one of the best indie-published historical novels I have read in a while.  It has its flaws, but here, finally is a complete and well-told tale... that also happens to be true!

Carrie Welton is the story of a young woman who is determined to remain untamed by an abusive father and acquiescent mother.  Hemmed in only a bit by propriety and social expectations, Carrie's life takes her from a wealthy youth in Connecticut, to the artistic communities of New York, and finally to the Rocky Mountains.  Readers can follow her childhood closeness with her horse and sympathetic companion, Knight, to her financial involvement in the beginnings of the ASPCA.  Twined with the changing politics and social temperature of the mid to late 1800s, Carrie's life is a perfect backdrop for the history that carved a new nation into a country that would not be divided.

Readers are introduced to Carrie in a prologue offered by neighbor and confidante, Frederick, who also narrates Parts 1 and 3.  It was thrilling to read the voice of a 19th century narrator written in the 21st century.  Part 2 is third-person limited, focusing on Carrie's experiences away from Rose Hill, the home in which she had met abuse and tyranny.  And here, I must admit, I missed Frederick's voice.  It was much more appealing to come through his perspective than merely watching Carrie as we do in Part 2.

Mr. Monagan's skill as writer and researcher is clear in this work.  Obvious, also, is his knack for stories that interest.  His abilities in perception and perspective carry the plot where there is little historical information available.  This made the rare moments of too-much-historical-detail forgivable.  The sense of reportage Mr. Monagan has is spot-on in his description of the effects of the coming Civil War on the communities of Connecticut.

Life doesn't have the same arc that fiction does, but Mr. Monagan gives it a hearty go in this fascinating book.  There are moments of beautiful imagery and even a few absolutely perfect sentences here.  And while I agreed to review this book because I have found myself in the same locations as Carrie (a New England childhood and adulthood in the Rocky Mountains), it is not a book that will just interest readers of local history.  It is a solid story of an intriguing personality that will haunt. 

Photo Credit: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51y1b1sGWeL._SX332_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I received this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Forgetting Tabitha by Julie Dewey

I wanted this story to be good.  I wanted it to.  But…

This is historical novel that claims to follow a young girl from the seedy and corrupt life of Five Points, New York, as she journeys west on the Orphan Train in the late 1800s.  And instead I found Anne of Green Gables meets Fifty Shades of Grey.  

In the beginning of the novel, I immediately had to choose whether I was reading this book for its function as a story or for the quality of writing.  It clearly did not have both. Ms. Dewey has a feel for story and its grand scope, and even its romanticism, but the writing lacked consistency, flow, and an appropriate voice.  So I chose to read for story – but even there I felt betrayed by the author.   Full to the brim with historical trivia (that needed a heavy dose of fact-checking), I did not get to know “Tabitha” well-enough before I had to “forget” her.  I was swallowed up by all the telling, not showing, and dismayed with the graphic and disturbing sexuality.  This could have been a pretty good story – a nice and well-spent tale – without the sudden and jarring turn into the ultra-sleazy.  There is a way to cover the dark-side of life without giving every single twisted detail.

This book needs more proofreading, content and copyediting, and polishing.  And it needs to be decided whether this is an expository or a narrative piece.  While the narrators’ voices are easy enough for a young reader to follow, this book was definitely too adult – too poorly edited – for me.

I received this book in exchange for a fair and honest review to Amazon and Goodreads.  Please look for my review there as well.

Photo credit:  http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519NGMvCMlL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris

Suspense and intrigue, but nothing so desperately out of the ordinary in this war story - and yet, it didn't matter.  There was so much tactile and sensual beauty in the words and in the structure they built - this tale felt utterly unique.   

I was pulled in.  It was if there had been no other family trying to survive a devastating war before.  There had been no resistance groups or behaviors before this novel.  There had been none of the painful irony of children playing adults in an underground that feels like a naive game of pretend.  Never before have mothers hidden their true selves from their children in order to protect them.  And it seems as if there has never been a daughter, in all of recent literature, that has found compassion for her monstrous mother, too late - much too late.

Joanne Harris has skillfully woven the present day with the dark days of World War II in the Loire Valley.  A father is killed in battle and a mother, battling debilitating migraines and her own personal judgments, is left to keep her family alive, waiting for the war to be over.  

The farms and orchards are the mother's sole pleasure and cooking and preserving her art.  But she also has a scrapbook she keeps, mingling recipes, truths, and secrets.  Her youngest child possesses that book, and also the key to events  that have strangled the village.

There are twists, deceptions, and heroics that tumble into a fictional world that feels all too real.

Photo credit: http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388374999l/15096.jpg