I LOVED Peter Geye’s first novel, Safe From the Sea, that I jumped at the chance to read his second novel!
Lighthouse Road moves back and forth between two different time periods, 1890’s and 1920’s. In the 1890s, young Thea Eide, is sent on a voyage from Norway to Lake Superior, Minnesota. She is to meet up with her uncle but finds out he has turned mad and it wouldn’t be safe for her to go to him. With the help of one of the big men in town, Hosea Grimm , Thea lands a job as cook at a logging village.
Soon, she finds herself pregnant and she has her son, Odd. However, she dies soon after giving birth. Hosea Grimm takes over custody of Odd and raises him, like a son. He also has a “daughter” Rebekah, who has her own very odd story. As these four characters intertwine and tell their story, it becomes that nothing in this tangled story is as it seems. There are many secrets and Hosea is at the center of all of them.
I am not going to go into much detail here at the risk of giving out spoilers. Lighthouse Road is very different than Safe From the Sea. Sure, it centers around character relationships and has great character development but that is where the similarities end. The writing is colder in a way, as cold as the landscape described, yet still brilliant.
Brilliantly different than anything I have ever read before.
My recommendation: If you want to read a Peter Geye novel, I suggest you start with Safe From the Sea. It is written more like a typical well written novel and you most likely fall in love with Peter Geye and want to read more. Lighthouse Road is definitely a more challenging novel so I recommend you read it next. I cannot recommend both novels high enough and can hardly wait to see what Peter Geye has in store for us next!
4.5/5
Thanks to Caitlin Hamilton Summie of Unbridled Books, I am giving away one copy of Lighthouse Road. This giveaway is open to the U. S. and Canada and ends on October 30, 2012. Please use Rafflecopter to enter.
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