This is a beautifully written book, with strong characters but a very slow plot line. While the narrative is slow it is full of much emotion, thoughts, and is deeply moving. Tom recently returned from the battlefield horrors of WWI takes his new wife Isabel to Janus, a remote port where he maintains the lighthouse. Alone, except for each other, they try to start a family, but Isabel loses child after child and in the desperate time after the still birth of her 3rd child, they discover a boat washed up on the rocky shore.