Lighthouse Girl

Description

Fay lives alone with her father on bleak, windswept Breaksea Island, but her isolated life takes a dramatic turn with the outbreak of World War I. Fay collects the messages of lonely soldiers heading to the frontline. She is their last hope of getting messages telegraphed back home. After their departure for the battlefields of Egypt and Gallipoli, she follows their fortunes and continues her long-distance conversations with letters and postcards. Then one day, a single, sad telegram arrives, and the war is brought brutally home. Based on the true story of Faye Howe, this gentle tale brings to life the hardships of those left at home during the war - waiting, wondering, hoping. Drawing on fascinating archival material, and interweaving fact with fiction, Dianne Wolfer deftly recreates this period in Australian history from the perspective of a young girl.

Dianne Wolfer is the author of 15 books for teenagers and young readers. Light Horse Boy was a Children's Book Council of Australia Honour Book and won the 2014 Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Children's Books. Granny Grommet and Me, inspired by surfing grandmas, was also on the CBCA shortlist. Lighthouse Girl, winner of a West Australian Young Readers' Book Award, explores the story of Fay Howe, the Albany lighthouse keeper's daughter who signalled to soldiers in 1914. It inspired the hugely popular Royal de Luxe performance of The Giants at Perth Festival (2015). Dianne wrote her latest book, The Shark Caller, as part of the PhD she is currently completing at UWA, but she has been dreaming about this story for ten years.

Full of evocative illustrations, sepia photographs, and news clippings, Wolfer's book transports. A great one for early and older readers alike. --Frances Atkinson, arts editor, Sunday Age