The Light Between Oceans
Why this book?
One miscarriage is unsettling, and a series of them can be severely disrupting to a woman and to her marriage. So what if, unexpectedly, a baby appeared at their doorstep? The possible moral choices that must be made would be complex and powerful, and would affect many lives then and into the future.
This novel brings us into the lives of such a couple. Living on an otherwise unpopulated island, they see a rowboat washed ashore that contains a dead man and a live infant. I found compelling the moral dilemma which confronts them: try to find the infant’s mother, or keep the child. The husband is swayed by his wife’s agonizing pleas for them to keep the child as their own. But years later the husband identifies the biological mother, and a new set of choices is presented to him - and to us, the readers.