'Elphinstone is a worthy successor to writers like Linklater and Mackay Brown, developing themes in the new century with a voice which is distinctly her own.' Herald

May, 1831, and on a tiny island off the Isle of Man a lighthouse provides a harsh living for an unusual family. Lucy and Diya, husbandless and with three children between them, watch over the ancient light on Ellan Bride. Meanwhile the Scottish engineer, Robert Stevenson, is modernising the nation's lighthouses, and Ellan Bride and the future of the family, are under threat. When two surveyors arrive to assess the light, tension escalates to danger point.

"Of all the fictional islands in all the world, this one feels the most solidly real." - * The Scotsman *

"The prose is crisp... but what stands out is Elphinstone's sense of a strange time and place." - * Times *