When the Lighthouse Broke the Sea

Abstract

My senior project is the start of a book that explores the concept of what family is and how familial histories and stories are inherited. This project came out of a workshop class that I took the first semester at SUNY Purchase. In the summer of 1952, aspiring writer, Elizabeth Walker ventures from New York City to the small, coastal town of Breakpoint, Massachusetts to find her birth parents under the guise of writing a book on small-town America. (pause) Once she secures a room in the home of the Turner family, she is drawn into their complex world and soon discovers that the truth of her birth is entangled in the past of the Turners. At the Turner house, on the cusp of her ninth birthday, Lacey Turner is desperate to be treated like an adult. But when her Father's death disrupts the comfort and familiarity of everything she's ever known, she finds herself on a quest that leads her into a thicket of mysteries. Elizabeth's arrival strikes a match to the family façade, bringing light to buried secrets that tell a new tale about the Turners. While Lacey aims to find the mystery behind her ghostly tabby cat, Elizabeth delves deeper into her history, and everyone in Breakpoint begins to find their personal histories completely re-written.