Lisa Wingate brings another great story from the Outer Banks of North Carolina with “The Sea Keeper’s Daughters.” If you love the Outer Banks, you will love this book. If you love American history, particularly the Great Depression, you will love this book.
“Daughters” tells the story of Whitney Monroe, a culinary wiz trying to keep her Michigan restaurants afloat after suffering several setbacks. While struggling with her business, she receives word that her stepfather, who still lives in the family’s Roanoke Island inn, has suffered a medical emergency.
What starts as a quick trip to help her estranged stepfather Clyde and to decide the fate of the Excelsior Inn quickly becomes a meaningful journey of discovery for Whitney. She learns more of her family’s past — revealing many shocking secrets along the way.
With this novel, Lisa Wingate offers us a lesson on the Federal Writers’ Project, created under the Roosevelt administration during the Depression. It employed people like writers, photographers and map makers to travel throughout the nation and record the histories of its places and peoples.
By using letters written to Whitney’s grandmother, Wingate does a great job intermixing Whitney’s modern-day story with Alice’s Depression-era story. This novel is not only entertaining, but educational also.
Some old friends and places make an appearance (Sandy’s Seashell Shop, for example), and we meet new friends you’ll love — hero Mark, beach bum Joel, cantankerous but easy-to-like Clyde, lovable dog Ruby, and Alice, the unknown-to-Whitney great-aunt who worked for the federal project.
“The Sea Keeper’s Daughters” teaches us we all have meaning and worth; to savor each and every moment with our loved ones; and that we all have secrets in our pasts. It tackles heavy issues like prejudice, compassion, and doing what’s right, not just what’s easiest.
Five stars out of five.
Tyndale House Publishers provided this complimentary copy for my honest, unbiased review.
“The Sea Keeper’s Daughters” by Lisa Wingate