"Its a luxury to something that serves no practical purpose:the luxury of civilization" 
 "If a parent lost a child, there was no special label for their grief" 
 "Right and wrong can be like bloody snakes: so tangled up that you can't tell which is which until you've shot 'em both, and then its too late" 
 I'd been looking forward to read this book since it came out. The concept, a lost baby raised by two people who are not its parents grow to love the child only to learn its parents were still alive and want it back, seemed sad, but interesting. 
 The story starts with a man named Tom Shelbourne, a former soldier who is just looking for the next step in his life after seeing so much death in WWI. The setting is a small town in Australia called Partageuse in the early 1920s, a place and time I have seldom heard about until this book. Interestingly the word "Partageuse" was a French word that meant "good at sharing" as well as "dividing". Tom ends up here to work for the lighthouse 30 miles off the coast. 
 There Tom meets a young and vibrant woman called Isabel, ten years his junior. Their love story is sweet and Tom eventually proposes to her and they get married after a two year and long distance courtship. Isabel moves to the lighthouse island with Tom and they live a peaceful life waiting for the next step, children. The language in the book creates a beautiful locale and a perfect isolated paradise. 
 Unfortunately Isabel has three miscarriages, each taking a little bit more of her soul. She becomes angrier and sadder with each one. Then one day they come across a dead man and a baby and Isabel talks Tom into keeping it and because she was pregnant, they pass the little girl as their own. They name her Lucy. 
 Several years pass and they fall in love with Lucy. When the time comes for them to come off the island to take her to town for her baptism they discover that a woman named Hannah lost her husband and baby to the ocean a few years before. Tom is sure that the baby he has been raising is the baby that Hannah lost. Isabel talks him into ignoring his burning conscience and remembering that he married her and his loyalty should be to her and his baby. 
 The story then does something terrible, it tells you Hannah's story and you begin to see how wrong Tom and Isabel are. The story then makes sure to tell you everyone's emotions and choices as the case of who Lucy/Grace (the child's real name) wants to be with. The tragedy drags both of their families in and there is no easy solution. 
 The book is one of the most tragic I have read in a while. The turmoil of emotions it digs at ran me through the anger and sadness that these characters suffered.