Customer Reviews

Walk Across the Sea

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Ever since she was three years old, Eliza Jane McCully has lived in the lighthouse at Crescent City, California, where her father is the keeper. Now thirteen, Eliza has many responsibilities, helping her father to keep the light burning, and eagerly awaiting the birth of her new baby sibling. One day while chasing her stubborn goat across the pathway to the island, she is caught by a wave. A Chinese boy saves her goat and warns her about the wave just in time. Eliza is confused, because her father has taught her that the Chinese are evil heathens. An unexpected tragedy causes Eliza to doubt her own beliefs as well as questioning her father's. When the townspeople run the Chinese out of Crescent City, Eliza watches in horror, unable to do anything. But when the boy who rescued her comes to her for help, Eliza must make the ultimate decision. Is she is brave enough to openly defy her father? I highly reccomend this novel to readers who enjoy historical fiction.

18th century California was a time of prejudice. Walk Across the Sea, centers around independent Eliza Jane, a young teenage girl who lives with her parents in a northern California lighthouse. When a mysterious Chinese immigrant boy saves her goat from the California waters, she tries to find him to pay him back. She soon learns that prejudice surrounds the Chinese by the people of her town. Along the way helping her is her brave and helpful friend Sadie, her open minded and kind neighbor, Dr Wilton and her pet goat Parthenia. This story has a mix of friendship, prejudice, religion, compassion, and morality. This out of the ordinary story shows prejudice back then and gives lessons on how we can be rid of prejudice today. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested about life in general. Walk Across the Sea makes you think about things that you normally wouldn't think about in life. You learn you always have to been open minded and very conscious of other people and their beliefs. If you want to read a different story, Walk Across the Sea is for you! I also recommend ALL books in the Dear America, My Name Is America, and Royal Diaries Series.

Written from the perspective of a thirteen year-old girl, Eliza, in late nineteenth century Crescent City, California. Eliza lives on an island with her parents and helps them run the lighthouse. (Interesting historical fact-this is the Battery Point lighthouse in Crescent City. The characters are fictional, but the lighthouse is not.)

Many residents of Crescent City want the Chinese out. Eliza begins to question the prevailing prejudice when she makes friends with a young Chinese boy. She must stand up for what she knows is right, even if it means standing up to her own father.

I thought this book was so well written and with so many layers. First of all, the lighthouse and island life were so intricately described...I could tell the author did her research. As a reader, I could love the island with Eliza and all its wildness and storms and unpredictableness.

In a way, the island kind of parallelled Eliza's life at that time. The sea was tempestuous just like the townspeople and there wasn't a whole lot she could do to affect the outcome of campaign against the Chinese...other than stand (like an "island") for what she believed was right.

And the lighthouse was God because this was also a story about Eliza's coming into her faith by her own right, and not leaning so much on the faith of others. SPOILER: There is a beautiful scene at the end, in the lighthouse when Eliza knows that God is listening.

Eliza's father is among the townspeople that do not want the Chinese in Crescent City, and she struggles with reconciling the father she loves -and who is a good man- with the father who is prejudiced.

SPOILER: Eliza's mother has a miscarriage. In a way, I saw this book as pro-life. Eliza saw the unborn child. Eliza sought out the doctor and asked him to show her the graveyard where the unborn children were buried. Eliza refers to the baby as her "little sister," and the baby is eventually brought back to the island and buried.

In the end, the family makes a sacrifice which is sad, but beautiful, too. And right. It ended just how it should end

genre: historical fiction
setting: 1886, Crescent City CA and its lighthouse
1st person account of Eliza, 15 yrs, protagonist

Eliza struggles to come to terms with the contrast/mystery between a merciful God and the loss of a prematurely born sibling together with rampant community prejudice toward Chinese immigrants.

Fletcher's description of lighthouse technology and administration and tidal cycles is captivating for someone who has been landlocked most of his life.

What makes the story is the unmasking of fear and loathing toward Chinese immigrant laborers who came to America to bridge our country from Atlantic to Pacific with the building of the railroad and to incur exploitation for the sake of sustaining loved ones back home.

This is the account of the expulsion of Chinese residents from Crescent City, CA due to fears of job loss by white, Christian families. It is part of my own legacy--Chinese residents were massacred and railroaded out of Rock Springs, WY, my own native state, around the same time.

Fletcher makes good use of artifacts and dialogue of the period to firmly ground the story. The one shortcoming--Chinese characters are underdeveloped. It's an engrossing story.

* title of book chapter

The story really has good descriptions(I know because I've been to the light house in the book)and it really makes a picture in your mind of what it would of been like back then!This is one of my favorite books so I would definitely recommend it!