Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Lighthouse: A Novel, by Eugenia Price

Lighthouse, Saint Simons Island, GA

I thought I had read all of Eugenia Price's novels years ago, at least 30 or 40 years, but I did not remember this one as I was reading it. It is one of a trilogy of novels from colonial and Revolutionary American times through the American Civil War, mostly in St. Simon's Island, Georgia (near Savannah). My friend Carol loaned it to me, as we traveled with a group from our church to Savannah, St. Simon's Island, and Jekyll Island, and saw the lighthouse up close. It was not the one Mr. Gould built, though. That one was destroyed by Confederate troops as they retreated from the island, to prevent it aiding the Union Navy.
St. Simons Light

Lighthouse is about an historical figure, James Gould, who built the St. Simon's Island lighthouse and was its first lightkeeper. Copied and pasted from Wikipedia: "Lighthouse is a 1972 novel by Eugenia Price, the third and last of St Simons Trilogy. Previous two were- The Beloved Invader (1965) and New Moon Rising (1969).[1][2] The story centers on a man James Gould- founder of the Southern dynasty. He dreams to leave the cold New England hills where he was born and want to make better life for himself in the magnificent, untamed, post-Revolutionary south. How Gould pursues his strange ambition, the exotic people and places he encounters along the way, and especially the beautiful and strong willed young girl who comes to share the dream and the life he has chosen, make up the core of this novel."