The Light

First lines

About this book

When Rowan Rhodes, a 13-year-old African-American boy who loves reading about ghosts and the supernatural, moves with his father, a lighthouse keeper, from Oakland, California to the tiny, isolated and archaic village of Ravensport on the rocky Massachusetts coast, he seems to have fallen into an H.P. Lovecraft story. They arrive late at night during a storm at the 200-year-old lighthouse; and though morning brings a more cheerful perspective, Rowan soon discovers mysteries, such as why does the town’s library have a copy of the Necronomicon, a book of communicating with spirits that isn’t supposed to exist? Another, the death of an English boy who was drowned in a shipwreck on Deadman’s Reef in 1824, the sad irony being it happened on the night before the light was first lit and which could have saved the boy’s ship. A sketch had been made of the boy in hope someone could identify him as he lay in the same bed where Rowan now sleeps, but no one claimed him and he was buried with only the name, Rook, which was engraved on a silver locket. Mysteries deepen like Ravensport’s fog when Rowan meets Pip, an adopted boy from England who looks exactly like the death sketch of Rook. Rowan and Pip have adventures together along with a “gang” of other boys who call themselves the Ravens, and become close friends while seeking at first to identify Rook by research on the Internet, but seemingly awaken Rook’s ghost, who tries to ask them for help in dreams. But, what is Rook asking them to do, only to have his real name known? To find the lost skeletal remains of a shipmate? …Or, could …

Themes & subjects

About the author

Jess Mowry

1960