Today is Book Club day, so in honor, 

here is quick look at the next to last book we read.

**************************

Have you ever read a book that endeared your heart to its characters, only to later be broken to pieces due to the trials, choices and consequences those same characters made and endured?  This book, The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman, did exactly that!

It is set in Australia nearly a century ago.  It follows Tom who has returned from war and becomes a lighthouse keeper on a remote, isolated island off the coast.  The story takes you within the heart of a man who has endured much pain, from youth to the tragedies of war.  However, hope is brought into his life when he meets Isabelle, a young girl full of joy and life and who eventually becomes his wife.

What I saw within the pages of this book were the similarities of struggles that cross over from the words in a page into the every day life.  There are pains and struggles that are timeless.  The loss of a child, whether from war, birth or racism, is a loss that runs deep no matter if it happened today or a century ago.  The deep love and struggles of a marriage carry through time no matter the husband or wife, no matter if real or fiction. Every marriage ebbs and flows through time.  The turmoil, consequences and freedom of our choices is something every person walks through.  There are happenings that can bind hearts together, even if across a page.

This book is about those choices, the ones Tom and Isabelle make, and the joy and pain that follows as consequence.  How one woman’s joy is another’s heartache; how sometimes there is no black & white in what is best for a child; how sometimes we don’t get a choice but still have to feel and struggle with the consequences that follow and how so many different emotions can reside in one heart.

Everything in this book hurts and yet it is one I am so glad to have read.  It is written well, it took the time to build character and it moved my heart to extraordinary measures.  It also reminded me that though pain in life can have the ability to crush you, never run from it, for it is this pain that shapes who we become!

**************************

In honor of this book, I dug up a few pictures that had to do with the ocean or bodies of water.  You see, Tom was a light house keeper on a little island of the coast of Australia.  So much of the story took place on the island or within the vicinity of a beautiful yet vast ocean.  The water is a wonder of God’s creation, giving us life and yet also holds the power to take life away.