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This is a very fine first novel by a promising writer who has already attracted some attention and much praise from her mentors Stephanie Johnson and Siobhan Harvey. It is set in the present day, but has many references back to historical events. The lives of three women interweave in the novel. Eliza McGregor is New Zealand's only female permanent lighthouse keeper, at Pencarrow lighthouse near Wellington in the 1850s. She takes life, and its storms, head on, hardening herself against its wintry gales. In the present day, Antoinette, a widowed grandmother, struggles with her sense of self-worth as she deals with budding loneliness. And emotional Grace, much younger, caught in a cool, loveless marriage with Jason, tries to commit suicide and is assigned to a psychiatric clinic. There she meets Antoinette, and an unusual friendship develops. As the novel develops Eliza, the lighthouse keeper from an earlier century, becomes a presence in Grace and Antoinette's lives, a ghostly vision who seems to have a life of her own in the present day...