Keeping the Good Light

A mile away from City Island in the Devil's Belt of Long Island Sound stands the Stepping Stones lighthouse, where 16-year-old Eliza lives with her parents and two older brothers in 1903. Intelligent and artistic, Eliza is bored by the endless round of chores and chafes under her stern Irish mother's constant haranguing to look and act ladylike. Her days become considerably more grim after her favorite brother drowns, but a move to her married older sister's home on City Island proves a welcome change. Eliza teaches fourth grade and enjoys herself-until she gets fired for conduct that has been ``far from demure'' (her infractions include a trip to a saloon, where a single beer intoxicates her). Her only choices, it seems, are to marry an affluent but boring man or return to the drudgery and tedium of the lighthouse. But at the last minute she is ``rescued'' in a surprising fashion by dint of a message she had put in a bottle six years earlier. First novelist Kirkpatrick cuts Eliza and many of the other characters from familiar cloth, but the wealth of well-researched period details and the author's obvious love for her story's setting add up to an engaging read. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)