Thomas Nelson (January 12, 2010)

When she was too young to remember the events or her parents, Addie was rescued from a shipwreck by the local lighthouse at the scene of the wreck. The couple who took her in raised her as their own though her adoptive mother lacked the love her father lavished onto his “princess”. As an adult, a man who is acquainted with her biological family discovers her as a result of seeing a picture that so thoroughly resembled her true mother he came and revealed the true circumstances to both her and Mrs Sullivan who had taken on the care of the lighthouse following her husband’s death of consumption.

Addie or Julia Eaton (her birth name) was thrust into unfamiliar environs and despite craving the love Mrs Sullivan never exhibited toward her Julia struggled with changing herself to meet the expectations of the family she never knew she had. When she joined the Eaton household as governess to her half sister’s young son, she and her sister’s husband find themselves tangled up in not only the web of lies and deceit surrounding the Eaton family’s past, the losses they have suffered in their short lifetimes, and hope seems distant at best. As Julia comes to care for her nephew and his father stumbling through raising his child without a mother’s care she also begins to discover things are not as they appear nor are the family she begins to make a place among who they want everyone to believe they are.

Coble deftly intertwines the threads of mystery, suspense, history and just a hint of romance into a tapestry of light and shadows rife with characters that draw the reader into Coble’s narrative of life on the Pacific coast as well as Julia’s struggle to reclaim the past that was ripped from her before she was able to make her choice about the person she dreamed of being. As the skeletons are exhumed from the closets of her unknown past so the dangerous truths threatening her very existence begin revealing the inherent risks of reclaiming her identity and the blessings anonymity provided to her childhood years.

Coble has managed to create a world of the past peopled with characters who have only begun to draw my imagination into their circumstances and atmosphere. It appears that Coble has more to share with readers about Mercy Falls and its residents. As such I will be impatiently awaiting the continued story of the Eatons, Sullivans, and those surrounding them. (ISBN#9781595542670, 320pp, $14.99)

Codicil:
Visit Colleen’s Website. Click the bookcover above for more info or to purchase a copy. This review can also be found at Christian Bookworm Reviews. Thanks to Thomas Nelson for a review copy on behalf of Christian Bookworm Reviews.

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