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2000s: On the shores of Lake Superior, a friendship forms and secrets unfold..
The Lightkeeper’s Daughters
What you need to know before your trail
Elizabeth’s eyes are failing fast. She can’t read the books she loves but her mind remains as sharp as ever despite her failing eeysight
Her father’s journals are discovered on a shipwrecked boat, so she gets a wayward teen Morgan, to read to her. An unlikely friendship grows between them, and Elizabeth is carried back to her childhood home – the isolated lighthouse on Porphyry Island, Lake Superior – and to memories of her enigmatic twin sister Emily.
But for Elizabeth, the faded pages of her father’s journals reveal more secrets than she anticipates and provide the key to a moment she has never understood. The day when she found a grave, marked with her own name…
Locations
Reset- Canada - Ontario
- A: Lake Superior
- B: Porphyry Island
- C: Thunder Bay
- D: Thunder Bay - Museum
- E: Black Bay
Travel Guide
Lake Superior, ON, Canada
There’s a really interesting story behind this novel
The author note explains it beautifully:
The whole novel was inspired by the Canadian men and women who served as Great Lakes Light House keeper during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Porphyry Island is the last in a chain of islands that stretches beyond the Black Bay Peninsula on the Canadian Shore of Lake Superior. the light station here served to mark the shipping channel north of Port Arthur and Fort William, now Thunder Bay This was the second lighthouse constructed on the Canadian Side of Lake Superior and first illuminated the waters near Black Bay in 1873.
Andrew Dick was the keeper there from 1880 to 1910. He actually did leave behind several journals that captured the themes and thoughts of the time. He lived there with his Indigenous wife and their ten children.
The real life journals are now actually on display in the Thunder Bay Museum.
Streetview Maps
D) Canada - ON - Thunder Bay
D) Canada - ON - Thunder Bay - Museum
Trail Gallery
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
This is the kind of novel you hug after you’ve finished but get wet with the tears you have wept whilst reading.
It’s a poignant and gorgeous read all in one. When it’s sad, it’s sad – oh my goodness. But it’s also lyrical, poetic and crying to be read aloud. I need this to be a film as I need to hear the soundtrack for real I had playing in my head when I read this.
There’s something very magical about a story woven with historical fact and once I’d found out just what kind of story and place inspired this novel, I was captivated. There’s so much historical mystery and suspense in this book. The author has carefully done her research and brilliantly woven it into a novel of intrigue and suspense.
It’s also one of those novels where the setting is the story and the story is the setting. Lake Superior – the Canadian Side is highlighted and is also the star of the show. Glorious and slow paced, this novel drifts into your consciousness and hits on every one of your emotions.
Love it and highly recommend. I also have to say – what a gorgeous cover! (And covers having seen the foreign editions!)
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Lightkeeper’s Daughters
Destination: Lake Superior, Thunder Bay Author/Guide: Jean Pendziwol Departure Time: 1870s
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