We Keep a Light

In this classic memoir of life in rural Nova Scotia, a woman recounts her family’s experiences running a lighthouse station on their own island. In We Keep A Light, Evelyn M. Richardson describes how she and her husband bought tiny Bon Portage Island and built a happy life there for themselves and their three children. On an isolated lighthouse station off the southern tip of Nova Scotia, the Richardsons shared the responsibilities and pleasures of island living, from carrying water and collecting firewood to making preserves and studying at home. The close-knit family didn’t mind their isolation. Instead, they found delight in the variety and beauty of island life. We Keep A Light is much more than a memoir. It is an exquisitely written, engrossing record of family life set against a glowing lighthouse, the enduring shores of Nova Scotia, and the ever-changing sea. Originally published in the United States and the United Kingdom as We Bought An Island, and by the Ryerson Press in Canada as We Keep A Light, Evelyn Richardson's dazzling memoir of life on Nova Scotia's Bon Portage Island won the Governor-General's Award for Creative Non-Fiction in 1945. Nimbus Publishing is proud to include a postscript called Ten Years Later that was added to the book in a 1954 printing. We Keep A Light is the inspiring story of how the author and her husband bought tiny Bon Portage Island and built a happy life for themselves and their three children on the isolated lighthouse station off the southern tip of Nova Scotia. But it is much more than the story of a unique personal experience. We Keep A Light is a freshly written and engrossing record of family life set against the ever-changing background of the sea, the vagaries of the weather, the enduring shores, and the great beacon light, all of which become important characters in this fascinating and isolated world. As Evelyn Richardson remarked in the original edition, she wrote the book "partly to answer the polite incredulity I face when I say 'No, we aren't lonely, we like the island.'" We Keep A Light transports readers back to a simpler era when lighthouses were very much a part of the Maritime way of life. As fresh today as when it first appeared, this classic preserves the past in both remembrance and written word In We Keep A Light, Evelyn M. Richardson describes how she and her husband brought tiny Bon Portage Island and built a happy life there for themselves and their three children. On an isolated lighthouse station off the southern tip of Nova Scotia, the Richardsons shared the responsibilities and pleasures of island living, from carrying water and collecting firewood to making preserves and studying at home. The close-knit family didn’t mind their isolation, and found delight in the variety and beauty of island life. We Keep A Light is much more than a memoir. It is an exquisitely written, engrossing record of family life set against a glowing lighthouse, the enduring shores of Nova Scotia, and the ever-changing sea. Evelyn Richardson was a teacher and writer who spent much of her life on Bon Portage Island in southwestern Nova Scotia where she wrote her critically acclaimed works including We Keep A Light and Desired Haven. Canadian author.