The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman is an Australian period story focusing on the aftermath of WWI. A veteran of this war returns to Western Australia with a touch of PTSD. He becomes a lighthouse watchman and catches the eye of a girl from the nearest shore. After they marry, the wife has multiple miscarriages which crush her spiritually and emotionally.
When a row boat with a dead man and a live infant arrives on shore of the island, the wife, wanting desperately to have a baby, convinces her husband not to tell anyone this happened – playing off that that baby was indeed theirs. Although he agreed, he was uneasy with the lie. All 3 fell in love and a solid family developed. When the baby was one year old, the family had shore leave and discovers that the baby girl has a live/real mother who was searching for the girl. The husband and wife don’t tell anyone that their baby is the missing girl. In guilt, the husband writes an anonymous note to the real mother informing her that the real father was dead but that the daughter was well cared for.
Fast forward three years to the next shore leave and the husband sends the real mother a rattle that was with the infant in the boat when he found her. The real mother has the police solve the case of who had her baby so the lighthouse couple is arrested and the girl is returned to the real mother. The daughter rejects her real mother. The husband to tires to take the blame of the “crime” to protect his wife but the wife eventually confesses that keeping the baby was her idea. They both are punished by the law. In time, the daughter accepts her real mother.
This is a heartbreaking story. The descriptions of miscarriage and grief were stark and realistic. When a spouses dies, the other becomes a widow/widower. When parents die, a child becomes an orphan. When a parent loses a child, there is no word for that designation.
