Island Light

Island Light

Ruth Lambert left Snow Island when she was a teenager, but returns in the Fall of 1990 after her aunt's death, when she and her sister inherit the old Snow Inn. Nick McGarrell, a Vietnam veteran, has quit his job on the mainland as an engineer and retreated to his island birthplace to work as a carpenter. Nora Venable, an aging lesbian and owner of the island's abandoned mansion, moves into the caretaker's cottage on a whim. From the confines of their small New England community, the trio watch as the United States prepares to go to war once again, this time in the Persian Gulf. When the mansion burns down one night in a mysterious fire, the lives of Nora, Nick, and Ruth unexpectedly intersect, tearing them from their private but determined battles with the past, and propelling them into the unknown future of loss, love, and redemption. Towler's characters are as complex and contradictory as those with whom we live our lives...[she] accomplishes the higher art of bringing us to see the drama in the commonplace, the demands of the ordinary, the conflicts and decisions made by people living the lives we discover in our families, our neighbors, ourselves. --Donald M. Murray, The Boston Globe Towler succeeds in bringing the small island community to vivid life, and the introspective characters are sympathetic...gracefully written, and the subtleties of family life should keep readers interested in the continuing saga. --Publishers Weekly Inner quandaries over love, sex, memories, dreams, and codes of duty are rendered with a light but vivid elegance...by intertwining each year's history and cultural shifts with the stories of individual islanders, Towler is creating a memorable regional trilogy. --Providence Journal Katherine Towler is the author of the novels Snow Island and Evening Ferry . She teaches in the M.F.A. Program in Writing at Southern New Hampshire University and lives in Portsmouth.