The Language of Sand
A Novel
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A magical novel that unravels one of life’s greatest mysteries—how to go on after a devastating loss—through the power of words and their ability to heal, to transform, and to touch the heart.
Luck: an event that could be for good or ill, depending on your interpretation.
As a lexicographer, Abigail Harker has always taken refuge in the meaning of words. But when fate erases in one tragic moment what she loves the most, the very foundations of her life vanish.
Abigail retreats to Chapel Isle, a secluded island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. As caretaker of a run-down lighthouse, she hopes to redefine herself. But as a resident soon remarks, “If you came to Chapel Isle for normal, you came to the wrong place.”
For on Chapel Isle, no one can be neatly defined. From a scientific genius to the feuding fishermen’s wives, from a handsome hothead to the ghost said to be haunting the lighthouse, everyone is struggling to find meaning where meaning seems lost. And when a series of mysterious crimes strikes the island, Abigail finds that she must face down her deepest fears if she is to save herself, her neighbors, and the new life she’s unexpectedly come to cherish.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Block (The Lightning Rule) explores in her quaint latest the notion of how losing oneself in a new adventure can help heal wounds. After Abigail Harker's husband and four-year-old son are killed when their suburban Boston home burns down, she moves to a place her husband treasured, Chapel Isle, N.C., leaving behind her beloved job as a lexicographer to become caretaker of a defunct lighthouse. Her living quarters are a shambles (and possibly haunted), and as she fixes up her digs and makes friends with the (naturally) colorful locals, Abigail finds a way through grief and toward a less fussy self. Block writes gracefully about heartache and the mending of an injured soul, and the smalltown backdrop is pleasant without being kitschy.
