The Lighthouse Road by Peter Geye

by:  Peter Geye
published by:  Unbridled Books
publish date:  October 16, 2012

Against the wilds of sea and wood, a young immigrant woman settles into life outside Duluth in the 1890s, still shocked at finding herself alone in a new country, abandoned and adrift; in the early 1920s, her orphan son, now grown, falls in love with the one woman he shouldn’t and uses his best skills to build them their own small ark to escape. But their pasts travel with them, threatening to capsize even their fragile hope.

I absolutely adored Peter Geye's first book Safe From the Sea.  It was a wonderful father/son book.  If you haven't read that one yet, I highly recommend it.

The Lighthouse Road was a little different.  It was a historical novel set in two different time periods.  One storyline followed Odd and his life in the 1920s.  The other followed his mother, Thea Eide, in the 1890s and what it took for her to get from her home country to Lake Superior.  Through flashbacks and memories we learn about the tragic circumstances of her life in America and Odd's birth.

I liked The Lighthouse Road, but once again Geye's biggest strength is in creating the setting.  He does such a great job of writing what that area of the country is like in the winter time.  It makes for great reading in the heat of the summer.  My disappointment was in the characters.  I didn't particularly care for Odd's "wife".  I suppose the reader isn't meant to care for her, but I didn't understand their attraction to each other unless maybe she was the only eligible female in the area.  I don't know, I just didn't get it. 

In the end, I would say this one was as good as Safe From the Sea, but it's different.  It took me a little while to get over that difference to be able to appreciate this book and the story it was telling.