The Light Between Oceans

Originally from Western Australia, M L Stedman has for many years lived in London, where she worked as a lawyer. She first decided to try creative writing in 1997, and set about finding a writing tutor. In the years that followed she did a few writing courses, and some of her short stories were published in anthologies.


Her debut novel, The Light Between Oceans, draws inspiration from the landscape of her native Western Australia, though she wrote and researched much of it, at the British Library.

A survivor of the First World War trenches, Tom enjoys the solitude of life as a lighthousekeeper, but one trip to the mainland brings him a wife, Isabel, with whom to share Janus Rock.

"The crying persisted.  The door of the lighthouse clanged in the distance, and Tom's tall frame appeared on the gallery as he scanned the island with the binoculars.  'Izzy!' he yelled, 'a boat!'  He vanished and re-emerged at ground level.  'It's a boat all right', Tom declared.  'And - oh cripes!  There's a bloke, but -'  The figure was motionless, yet the cries still rang out.  He hoisted out a woollen bundle: a woman's soft lavender cardigan wrapped around a tiny, screaming infant."

One fateful day, the sea washes a dinghy up on the shore containing the body of a man and a baby - very much alive - which the couple, desperate to start a family, decide to take as their own.

It is a tragic story about good people and the tragic decisions that they made.  They break the rules and follow their hearts.  It is about the love and beauty that Tom and Isabel found in their decisions for a brief interlude.  It is a story about right and wrong and the fine line that sometimes separates these values.  It is a story for which there can never be a 'good' and tidy outcome for the characters involved.