The lighthouse keeper
(Book)

In the twilight of his life, Peter O'Banyon looks out from the Massachusetts lighthouse that was his home and remembers the past. Orphaned at age 10, he came to the Port Hope Lighthouse to live with his uncle Billie. A solitary man, Billie had worked hard to amass a fortune and returned to Ireland with his wife and son, only to lose them. His son died in the influenza epidemic, and his wife drowned on the voyage back to the U.S. When Peter lost his family in a car accident, Uncle Billie took him in and taught him what it meant to be a lightkeeper and how to handle himself throughout life's crises. At 19, Peter married his childhood sweetheart before going off to fight in World War II. He survived the tragedies of war, but, like Billie before him, lost his wife.