Keeper of the Light

After the 1872 death of her father while trying to rescue drowning sailors from a sinking schooner, Faith takes over his job as a lighthouse keeper on Lake Michigan, until her mother decides to move into town, where Faith soon finds herself stifled by the role society expects her to play.

Grade 4-6AThis tale of courage and survival features a lighthouse keeper's daughter in the 1870s. Faith helped her father tend his light off Lake Superior until he drowned attempting a lifeboat rescue during a storm. She serves for five months as interim keeper, with no adult assistance. When Nathaniel Kent is appointed to replace her permanently, his keeping falls short of Faith's standards. Finally she intervenes at the point of a crisis, in an exciting race for time that saves the lives of her mother and his uncle. That Faith succeeds in this setting without compromising her femininity provides the balance and texture that make the book work. The tense, fast-paced rescue segment after Nat lets the light go out during a tumultuous storm features Faith's torching of her little brother's beach play fort as a beacon for a ship. This rescue rips along like a film's chase scene and broadens audience appeal. A short bibliography suggests adult books on lighthouses, their history, and female keepers. Resourceful daughters of keepers inhabit children's literature as symbols of children's determination, commitment, and power. This one is no exception.ALiza Bliss, Worcester Public Library, MA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Following in the footsteps of the lighthouse keepers found in Peter and Connie Roop's Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie (1985, not reviewed) and Deborah Hopkinson's Birdie's Lighthouse (p. 722), Faith keeps the oil burning on the shores of Lake Superior on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in a story set more than 100 years ago. After her father's untimely death trying to rescue a schooner, Faith takes charge of the lighthouse duties, considered man's work. When her father's replacement finally arrives, Faith reluctantly moves to town, where she spills tea, ruins her boots, wears trousers, and skips school, to the consternation of her mother. The adventure scenes, e.g., when Faith sneaks on horseback out to the lighthouse, are taut with suspense, although the formal language and contrived dialogue distract from the fast-paced action. Faith as girl-heroine-in-a-man's-world becomes overly self-conscious, until readers will feel fairly hit over the head with the fact that she is independent, capable, and going against convention. Nevertheless, there are many rousing moments in Curtis's first book, about a girl as ``strong as a fall storm on the lake.'' (bibliography) (Fiction. 10-14) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.