The Light is Ours - Ann Heyse

A work of historical fiction, The Light is Ours is set in a Great Lakes lighthouse in 1871-72. Lighthouse keepers in the small harbor town give aid to ship captains and sailors as well as their fellow townspeople in the harsh Wisconsin wilderness. When a formerly enslaved freedman and a ship captain come to Roundstone Harbor, a fictional village set on the Door County peninsula, their lives become intertwined with one another in a story of challenge and redemption.

Arden Anderson, a young ship captain who hauls cargo up and down the Lake Michigan shoreline carries a secret about a troubled past. He spends years as a young man sailing the world and five more years in the Union Navy during the War Between the States trying to flee from a past of which he’s ashamed. When a wealthy businessman hires the ship captain to transport supplies onto an island north of the Door County peninsula, the routine sail does not go as planned.

Meggie McGinn has come home to the lighthouse after four years away. She returns as a widow who must fight societal norms in order to be independent. And her abolitionist views are tested when she comes face to face with lingering effects of the slave trade.

The Light is Ours transports readers to a small harbor town 150 years ago when life was rugged, shipwrecks were not uncommon, and winters were cruel. It is a story of unforgettable characters and the difference they make by helping others survive.