The Lightkeeper's Daughters

The Lightkeeper's Daughters tells a beautifully descriptive story about the meaning of family, set on the shores of Lake Superior.

Jean E. Pendziwol

CBC Books CBC Posted: Jul 28, 2017 2:47 PM EDT | Last Updated: August 1, 2017

Though her mind is still sharp, Elizabeth's eyes have failed. No longer able to linger over her beloved books or gaze at the paintings that move her spirit, she fills the void with music and memories of her family a past that suddenly becomes all too present when her late father's journals are found amid the ruins of an old shipwreck.

How going for a walk solves most of Jean E. Pendziwol's writing problems

With the help of Morgan, a delinquent teenage performing community service, Elizabeth goes through the diaries, a journey through time that brings the two women closer together. Entry by entry, these unlikely friends are drawn deep into a world far removed from their own to Porphyry Island on Lake Superior, where Elizabeth's father manned the lighthouse seventy years before.

As the words on these musty pages come alive, Elizabeth and Morgan begin to realize that their fates are connected to the isolated island in ways they never dreamed. While the discovery of Morgan's connection sheds light onto her own family mysteries, the faded pages of the journals hold more questions than answers for Elizabeth, and threaten the very core of who she is. (From Harper Collins)

From the book

Arnie Richardson

The black Lab is aging. His arthritic legs stiffly pick their way along the well-worn path, stepping carefully over roots and carrying his stout form between the trunks of spruce and poplar. His muzzle, flecked with gray, tracks close to the ground, gathering the scent of his master's trail.

It is a morning ritual, one that takes them from the cottages at Silver Islet through the woods to Middlebrun Bay - a ritual they have practiced since the Lab was a gangly-legged pup. But even then, all those years ago, the man's hair was white, his eyes framed by crow's feet, his beard dusted with silver. Now they are both slowing, man and dog, wincing at stiff joints, choosing their footing carefully. Each morning when they set off at the first pale orange light of dawn, they greety each other with the simple satisfaction of knowing they have another day to do so.

The man leans comfortably on a walking stick, a length of knotty pine first polished by the waves of Lake Superior and then varnished until gleaming in his workshop. He does not need it, not until the trail begins to climb, and then his grip tightens and the wood becomes a part of him, necessary and integral. He pauses at the top of a ridge. Two paths merge here, the one they are on joining the much wider, more frequently traveled route that is part of the hiking trails of Sleeping Giant Provincial Park. The park is quiet now.

From The Lightkeeper's Daughters byJean E. Pendziwol2017. Published by Harper Collins.