The Lightkeeper's Daughters

May 29, 2017
YA author Pendziwol (Once Upon a Northern Light) pins her first story for adults to the “fortunes of chance” that bring mixed blessings to the last family manning a lighthouse on the Ontario side of Lake Superior. The narrative nimbly tacks between the past and present of Elizabeth Livingstone, a near-blind expat raised on Porphyry Island in the 1920s and ’30s. Since recovering her father’s old day logs, returned by a constable investigating a shipwreck, she’s eager to get to the bottom of the tragedy that forced her and her twin sister to leave the island 60 years before. Her failing eyesight prevents her from diving in until “fortune” pairs her with Morgan Fletcher, a foster teen sent to do community service at her retirement home. Game on. Cagey and drawn to bad company, Morgan turns out to be on an ancestral quest of her own and proves the perfect Watson. This is a perfect hammock read for those who love the Brontë sisters and Jodi Picoult in equal measure. Agent: Jenny Bent, Bent Agency.

May 1, 2017
A decades-old mystery is revisited as an elderly woman shares the story of her childhood with a troubled teen.Teenage foster child Morgan Fletcher has been sentenced to completing a term of community service at the senior center she tagged with graffiti art. On her first day scraping off spray paint, Morgan meets Elizabeth Livingstone, an elderly woman who's still sharp as a tack but is almost completely blind. A boat belonging to Elizabeth's older brother, Charlie, has just been found, empty and foundering on Lake Superior. The boat was discovered near Porphyry Island, a small island in the Thunder Bay District of Ontario, where she and her siblings were raised. Their father was the lighthouse keeper on Porphyry Island for many years during the early 20th century. Although Charlie is missing, the authorities have recovered journals that belonged to their dead father, Andrew, and those books have just arrived for Elizabeth. Unable to read her father's words on her own, Elizabeth looks to the delinquent teenager repairing the fence outside her window. Morgan is quickly drawn in by Elizabeth and her history, spending many hours reading to the old lady instead of hanging around with her deadbeat boyfriend. As Morgan helps Elizabeth solve the puzzles of her past, the two women, young and old, form an unlikely bond that helps Morgan unearth many mysteries about her own life. With each tidbit that Elizabeth discovers from her father's writings, Morgan becomes more desperate for answers about her own past. In her first foray into adult fiction, Pendziwol (Once upon a Northern Night, 2013, etc.) has created an intricately satisfying story about love and deception that manages to be both melancholy and exhilarating.A haunting tale of nostalgia and lost chances that is full of last-minute surprises.

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March 1, 2017

A children's author short-listed for the Governor General's Award, Pendziwol goes adult with the story of Elizabeth, confined to a retirement home and struggling with fading eyesight, who gets help going through her father's journals from a mouthy teenager performing community service at the home. With a 35,000-copy first printing; rights sold to 11 countries.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2017

Children's author Pendziwol's adult debut is about two women: elderly Elizabeth, who has lost her eyesight and yearns to know more about her family's past, and teenage orphan Morgan, who is performing community service at Elizabeth's assisted-living facility and gets roped into helping Elizabeth. When Elizabeth's late father's journals are discovered after an accident, Morgan reads them aloud to her. The 70-year-old tales of his time as the local lighthouse keeper on an island on Lake Superior unravel the clouded mysteries in the family. Both women will learn that their histories have always been entwined in ways neither could have realized. This atmospheric novel tells an intricate story about familial love and deception. While the story at the novel's core may lean toward the melodramatic, readers will be drawn in by the intergenerational relationship between Elizabeth and Morgan as they discover their pasts in each other. VERDICT Fans of Heather Young and Jojo Moyes might want to look into Jean Pendziwol this summer. [See Prepub Alert, 2/16/17.]--Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll. Lib., Pepper Pike, OH

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.