Keep the Light Burning

The cover illustration of Cori Mordaunt’s first novel, Keep the Light Burning, shows a stark white lighthouse with a golden beam of light illuminating the snowy darkness as high waves crash on the shore. The nail-biting parts of the story involving shipwrecks are balanced with calmer chapters about family and rural life in the Bruce Peninsula of Ontario almost one hundred years ago. In these latter sections, the interactions of the multi-faceted characters holds readers’ interest.

The story starts out with a funny incident. Thirteen- year-old Will Lindsay, the lighthouse keeper’s son, and Angus McLeod, the son of a farm labourer, are swimming in Lake Huron near Point Clark on the Bruce Peninsula. When Hiram, Angus’s older brother, steals Will’s britches, Will faces the embarrassment of entering a house full of women with no pants on. The boys form a plan. Because Will thinks everyone will be in the kitchen, he decides to dive through his sister’s open window while Angus knocks on the front door to draw everyone’s attention. To his chagrin, his mother, Auntie Meg and Granny are all in Emma’s room, and Granny, taken by surprise, rushes at him brandishing the chamber pot cover as a weapon.

When Will is fully clothed, the boys join Mr. Lindsay, “Pa”, in the lighthouse tower where he is tending “Len”, the lens, which is eight feet tall and weighs three tons. It magnifies the light of the lamp and casts it 15 miles across the water. The boys help crank the chains and weights that keep the lens turning on its track. An illustration of the latter, by Phil Macdonald, the cover artist, and a photo of a lamp fuel container and pump by Gene Mordaunt, illustrate the technical explanation.

In winter, when the Great Lakes have frozen and there is no shipping, the Lindsays live in town where Granny and Aunt Meg live year round. When Will’s aunt and grandmother end their holiday at the lighthouse, Will’s parents and sister drive them back in the horse and buggy, leaving Will at the lighthouse to light the lamp if the family is delayed in returning. Will is thankful for his father’s arrival before nightfall for he has never yet lit the light on his own. This small incident foreshadows events to come as does Granny’s farewell message to Will to stay out of the lake: “People die in that lake.”

Life in 1913 is presented through well-chosen detail about the children’s chores and mode of transportation. Will drives himself and Emma by horse and wagon, picking up other children en route except for Angus who has the job of lighting the school fire at 7:30 a.m. Older boys, including Hiram, miss the first few weeks of school to help with the harvest.

The Lindsays’ family life takes a downturn after Auntie Meg falls ill on the trip to town. Measles lead to pneumonia. With Mama in town caring for her sister, Pa, Will and Emma must get their own meals and perform other household duties. Through humorous trial and error, they learn skills and emerge more competent people. Will, the point-of-view character, finds the domestic disorder a challenge.

Will’s other worry is Angus who is being beaten by his father, “Ole Man McLeod”, and by Hiram. When Angus arrives at the Lindsays’ with a black eye and split lip and Will asks what happened, Angus replies, “Fell down the ladder....That was Angus’s way of telling him that this was Hiram’s doing. In the past, whenever the Ole Man took the fists to Angus, he said he fell out of a tree. This wasn’t happening much anymore. Not since Thresh Stewart hired Angus’s pa on, full time.”

The McLeod family live in a two-room cabin with a loft in which Hiram and Angus sleep on straw. Behind the house are five large stones for five infant siblings who died. Mrs. McLeod wears her husband’s cast-off shoes and is pregnant again. Angus tells Will of his plan to make the new baby a basket out of willow. “Actually,” he says, “I don’t know if it’s gonna be a basket or a casket. We don’t have much luck with babies at our house.”

Other families’ lives are less bleak. The Stewarts, for instance, hold a barn dance for the community. Mr. Blair, the school trustee, is a kindly presence. Spending time with the Lindsays and their neighbours, observing their way of life and their feelings toward each other is somewhat like a sojourn in L. M. Montgomery’s Avonlea though, in Keep the Light Burning, there is a male protagonist and more action and adventure. The two small flaws in the novel are that the many minor characters are given names, leading readers to think they should be focussed upon. Also, occasionally characters and events could use more of an introduction.

The alternating plot threads: Auntie Meg’s illness, Hiram’s bullying and harassment, and incidents of ships in danger, keep readers interested. The climax comes when a hurricane hits the Great Lakes, an event which occurred November 7-10, 1913, and took the lives of 248 sailors. During this “November gale”, Will and Emma are heroic. In the end, the Lindsays, who “pull together”, are intact as a family. The McLeods’ more complicated situation ends in a blend of joy and sorrow, with a ray of hope that may point to a welcome sequel.