Finished: The Light Between Oceans (Stedman) Book Club book #6. A pretty good summer read, but sad. The story of Australian WWI vet, Tom, who inwardly scarred by what he had to do in the war, decides to live a pretty solitary life as a lighthouse keeper. He will only get supplies every three months from a boat from town, and will only get to make a trip to town himself every three years! Of course, in the days before he heads off for his post at Janus Lighthouse he meets the free-spirited Isabel. They fall for each other pretty quickly, and after he leaves, she writes him a letter which he gets on the three month boat. By the time the 2nd three month boat comes, they have agreed to be married. Tom gets special permission to go to town to be married and honeymoon, and then Isabel leaves her parents to go and live with Tom on the lighthouse island. Isabel and her parents have suffered the enormous loss of both of her brothers in the war, but they all love Tom and know that he will take good care of her. Tom and Isabel both long for children, but sadly Isabel suffers two early miscarriages. When she suffers the loss of a third baby, this one at the seventh month of pregnancy, Isabel is beside herself and ready to die. Six years on the island and though they love each other, so much heartbreak. Two weeks after they bury their premature son, Isabel hears a baby's cry. Tom hears it too and rushes to the water's edge. There in a small rowboat is a dead young man and a very much alive tiny baby wrapped in a woman's shawl. Tom, a very upstanding man, is ready to alert the authorities and log the event in the books, but Isabel convinces him that the mother must also be dead...for why wouldn't she have been with the father and child? She falls in love with the baby and convinces Tom they should keep her. Tom is soon also in love, though his conscience always bothers him. They name the baby Lucy and live blissfully for the next 18 months. They don't even tell Isabel's parents, or the boat friends, Ralph and Bluey who deliver the supplies every three months, that Isabel had the third miscarriage. They just let everyone believe that Lucy is their child, born on the island. They get their three year shore leave when Lucy is 18 months old and Isabel's parents meet their granddaughter for the first time. Isabel's grieving parents finally have a new life to live for after losing their sons. In a shocking turn of events, though, Tom and Isabel hear about the tragic local story of a young mother, Hannah, who lost her husband and infant daughter to the sea!! Her young husband, Frank, had run away from an angry mob towards the docks and thrown himself and the baby into the rowboat to escape the baby being torn from his arms. Frank was a native of Austria and though he had nothing to do with the war or Germany, many of the town's men got drunk and felt very belligerent towards him when celebrating their fallen sons and brothers one night. They determined to take his child away from him as some of their sons had been taken from them! Frank, a mild-mannered baker, and a very good man, had a bad heart. Though the town and his young wife never knew what happened to them, Tom and Isabel realize that the dead man in the boat was Frank and that their beloved Lucy is Hannah's baby girl! Tom feels like they should do the right thing and immediately give Lucy over to Hannah, as heartbreaking as it will be, but Isabel is distraught and refuses. They head back to the island...but not before Tom sneaks an anonymous note into Hannah's mailbox telling her that her baby is alive and being cared for. Of course, this just fuels Hannah, who most of the town thinks is crazy in her grief by now, to push the authorities harder to find some answers. Without completely typing out the whole plot, needless to say...eventually everyone finds out that Tom and Isabel have Hannah's now nearly 4 year old little girl, Grace. The authorities come to arrest Tom and Isabel and reunite mother and child, but Tom says it was all his doing...that he insisted to Isabel they keep the child. He doesn't want her arrested. Isabel is so furious with Tom for his anonymous actions for the past two years leading to the discovery that she lets the authorities believe his story. It is so heartbreaking for all the parties involved, but mostly for little Lucy who has no idea why her "mamma" and "pappa" are being ripped away from her...and why the intense other lady is insisting that she's her mother. Lucy is so devastated that Hannah is beside herself realizing that the baby she loved is now someone else's. After several weeks, she heartwrenchingly decides that Lucy would be better off with Isabel, because she believes the story that it was all Tom's doing. She tells Isabel that she will give Lucy back to her to raise if Isabel will testify against Tom so he'll see prison time. In a twist that I didn't see coming, Isabel actually chooses Tom instead and goes to turn herself in. In another twist, Hannah actually ends up realizing that she would be better off trying to forge a new future with her daughter and not seeking revenge, so she testifies in favor of Tom and Isabel...that they probably saved her daughter from imminent death when she was a baby. Tom and Isabel are sentenced to just a few months in jail each, and then leave town never to see Lucy again. In six months time, with patience, perseverance, and the ingenuity of Hannah's father, Lucy's "Grandad", Lucy (Grace)...now called Lucy-Grace, starts to think of Hannah as her mother and her memories of Tom and Isabel fade away. It's all so sad. :-( Not that I condone what Tom and Isabel did at all...but I've also never lost my mind over three miscarriages in a row, so who's to say what my actions would have been. Anyway....20 years later, Tom and Isabel have settled in a town far way and have lived a quiet life by the ocean. Isabel has just died from cancer and Tom is lost. A car comes up the road, and a pretty young blond woman steps out. It's Lucy! She hadn't forgotten them as much as we thought, and upon hearing of Isabel's illness, had hoped to get there to see her. She has with her, her own little 3 month old son, Christopher. She and Tom have a quiet reunion and he gives her a letter Isabel had written for her in case Lucy ever came looking for them. Lucy promises to come again soon and Tom is left once again reflecting on his life, but just a bit happier now. A pretty good read, but such a tough subject. Glad I"m through with that one. :-)