“Nearness of the Wild” is the 2nd Volume in The Lighthouse Chronicles and follows the publication of “Perdita,” Volume 1. All the volumes in The Lighthouse Chronicles are stand-alone stories; while there are continuities of character and place, the stories are independent.
Description:
A stranger. A secret. A ghost.
Kay Kelly resides in a remote nursing home on the Saugeen-Bruce Peninsula. Though an avid reader and painter, she feels increasingly forlorn and isolated from her fellow residents. Death appears to be her only remaining adventure.
But when a reclusive Marged Brice arrives at the home, Kay learns that life isn’t quite finished with her yet.
Abandoned by her family, and claiming to be 134-years-old, Kay’s new neighbour seems utterly alone.
But is she?
The voice of an unseen child, and the mysterious appearance of a diary from Marged’s youth, transport Kay back to an 1899 lighthouse on the wild, tempestuous shores of Georgian Bay.
Against a backdrop of murder, a broken engagement, and a spectral child named “Perdita,” the diary connects Kay to an unresolved secret in Marged’s past.
Kay discovers that she may hold the key to Marged’s anguished choice between two loves.
But will she share it?
“Nearness of the Wild” is the 2nd Volume in The Lighthouse Chronicles and follows the publication of “Perdita,” Volume 1. All the volumes in The Lighthouse Chronicles are stand-alone stories; while there are continuities of character and place, the stories are independent.
Description:
A stranger. A secret. A ghost.
Kay Kelly resides in a remote nursing home on the Saugeen-Bruce Peninsula. Though an avid reader and painter, she feels increasingly forlorn and isolated from her fellow residents. Death appears to be her only remaining adventure.
But when a reclusive Marged Brice arrives at the home, Kay learns that life isn’t quite finished with her yet.
Abandoned by her family, and claiming to be 134-years-old, Kay’s new neighbour seems utterly alone.
But is she?
The voice of an unseen child, and the mysterious appearance of a diary from Marged’s youth, transport Kay back to an 1899 lighthouse on the wild, tempestuous shores of Georgian Bay.
Against a backdrop of murder, a broken engagement, and a spectral child named “Perdita,” the diary connects Kay to an unresolved secret in Marged’s past.
Kay discovers that she may hold the key to Marged’s anguished choice between two loves.
But will she share it?
SOMETIMES I STILL PUT MY HAND to my throat, my fingers expecting to find the locket there. Of course it isn’t. It’s been gone—how many years is it now? Could it be ten already? I’m turning one hundred and two this March, so it must be.
A decade! Think of that. A decade since I relinquished my locket.
I used to wear it often, until my fingers got too stiff to work the tiny clip on the chain. Achilles caught me with it a few times. He used to tease me.
“Miss Kay, you’re rubbing that locket like it’s some kinda lucky charm.” He wasn’t altogether that far off, but of course I never told him so.
“You should give it a break, or you’re gonna rub all its luck off.”
It was lucky, in a way. I did a lot of thinking with that locket. It always made me feel closer to Dr. Reid.
I guess it was fate that I had to give it up. We often say that, don’t we? When there’s no neat, logical explanation for how things turn out. Fate that Marged Brice came into my life, and I into hers. Fate that her nasty relatives left her high and dry, here at the Clarkson Home. They wanted her to be as far away as possible, and that was how she got them to agree to this Home, way up here on the Bruce Peninsula. Here on the third floor, just down the hall. Strange to think that she was once just a few steps away from me.
When Marged showed up, I was ninety-two. But unlike her, I had family who wanted me to stay around. My niece Alison was absolutely insistent that I live to one hundred. “A centurion in the family! Think of it!” Of course it’s centenarian, not centurion, but I never had the heart to correct her. Dear girl! (Besides, it was sort of fun to think of myself as a Roman warrior.) Poor Alison was under the impression I would get some sort of medal from the government. Alas, there was no accolade when I finally turned one hundred. You can request a congratulatory certificate from the Prime Minister, but somehow we never got around to it.
Oh dear. I’m digressing again! My thoughts do seem to wander these days. My mind “attend'st not” as the Bard says. Yet I do think that living a whole century is noteworthy. Come to think of it, if they ever do decide to hand out awards on the basis of longevity, Marged’s medal would have to be the equivalent of the Victoria Cross. Surely it should go to Marged Brice! She was well over one hundred when I met her. Well over. That is, if one believed her.
In the end, I did believe her. And that historian who came to interview her, Professor Hellyer—I think he eventually believed her, too. But I don’t think anyone else did, not at first.
Wait a minute, that’s not true.
There was Achilles. He believed Marged right off. In fact, it was Achilles who first told me she was coming to join me on the third floor. I’m pretty sure, because I remember him trying to get a rise out of me.
“I’ve got news for you, Miss Kay.”
There was much to recommend this book to me before I even started it as, if there is one thing I love, it's a lighthouse so "The Lighthouse Chronicles" was bound to tempt. However, the book is actually mainly set in a nursing home rather than a lighthouse, but we are transported to many other places throughout the book through reminiscences and memoirs.
The action begins when a new resident arrives, a lady called Marged who Kay, our narrator, is curious about, of course. Marged initially keeps herself to herself but eventually, Kay is asked to tea. It is, however, the diary that mysteriously appears in Kay's room which propels the story as it belongs to Marged. Kay is compelled to read it and it reveals the story of Marged's time as a nurse in a birthing home, a place where unmarried mothers come to have their babies. This is a place of dark dealings where good people try to do the right thing in the face of external pressure and we are particularly concerned with a young mother called Ruth and the story behind how she came to the home.
This forms a key part of the plot but we are also privy to Marged's love life and in particular her passion for George Stewart, a painter who Marged believes herself to be engaged to, but is he free to marry? In addition, Marged has attracted the attention of Dr. Reid, a steady man of good heart who Marged respects and likes and is, she will admit, attracted to, but does Dr. Reid have the same charisma in order to enchant Marged away from her love for George?
You can see from my short synopsis that there is a lot going on but it's all threaded together brilliantly. We move between present and past easily, chapters clearly marked, and the drawing of characters is distinct, which makes reading this a fully immersive experience. I felt the threat, the trauma, the yearning at various key points in the book and as a result, Scharper is a writer of whose work I would like to read more. In fact, I have Perdita downloaded already, the first "Lighthouse Chronicle".
If you like your fiction strong with a layer of spooky and a thick dollop of uncertain romance mixed with threat and tension, then this is a great book for your TBR list.