Silver, taken in as an apprentice to the old, blind lighthouse keeper Pew in 1969, after her mother is blown into oblivion by a mighty wind off the coast of Scotland, is comforted by Pew's stories--especially those about Babel Dark, the son of the lighthouse's founder whose journey from lightness into dark mirrors Silver's own life.

The diary of a ten-year-old girl who moves with her family in 1855 from a town on the Maine coast to rugged Turtle Island where her father is to be the lighthouse keeper.

In 1905, while pursuing her dreams of becoming an artist, the twelve-year-old daughter of the Cape Light lighthouse keeper learns the value of family, home, and friendship.

In late nineteenth-century California, when Chinese immigrants are being driven out or even killed for fear they will take jobs from whites, fifteen-year-old Eliza Jane McCully defies the townspeople and her lighthouse-keeper father to help a Chinese boy who has been kind to her.