The light between the oceans, by M. L. Stedman

Tom Sherbourne has returned to Australia after serving in WW I, not as damaged as some who returned, but wary of keeping the demons at bay.  More comfortable with his own company than with others, he takes a job as a lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, a fictional island between the Indian and Antarctic oceans about 100 miles off Australia’s western coast.  His only contact with the outside world is a quarterly visit from a supply boat and shore leave every two years or so.  Days are filled with record keeping and maintaining the light.  When he meets and marries Isabel, she quickly adapts to life on the island but their hopes for children are dashed after she suffers two miscarriages and a stillbirth.  Shortly after the latter, a boat washes ashore with a dead man and a crying baby wrapped in a woman’s cardigan.  The choice the couple makes to keep the baby and raise it as their own without reporting their finding shapes the novel’s exploration of moral choices.  342 pp.