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The Lightkeepers (novel)
The Lightkeepers is a 368 page novel written by Abby Geni published in 2016 by Counterpoint Press. The Lightkeepers is Geni's debut novel, and won the 2016 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction as well as the inaugural Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction. The book blends elements of mystery, suspense, ghost stories, nature horror, and travelogue. The novel is set in the real world location of the Farallon Islands. The book has been compared both to Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

Synopsis
The novel follows Miranda, a nature photographer, on her one-year stint on the dangerous Farallon Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Southern California. The conditions are harsh an inhospitable, qualities reflected in the team of scientists Miranda shares the ramshackle cabin on the island with. Shortly after arriving, Miranda suffers a sever fall due to the unstable ground of the island. In doing so, she disturbs a colony of rodents that she gets ran over by. She suffers a litany of injuries from this, and the ultimate result is her becoming severely ill.

While Miranda is bed-ridden and delirious from her illness, she is sexually assaulted by one of the scientists, who is later to be revealed as Andrew. At the time, however, Miranda is so weary from her sickness that she is not certain that the assault actually happened. Shortly after Miranda recovers from her illness, Andrew is discovered in one of the coves of the island, drowned and with a severe head injury. What follows is a brief investigation into the death of Andrew, with two detectives being flown in from the mainland. Andrew's death is swiftly ruled an accident.

Once Miranda fully recovers and is back to her full strength, she resumes her nature photography pursuit. While she does, she becomes enraptured by the beauty of the islands and the wildlife that inhabit it. During seal season on the islands, she becomes incredibly infatuated by the baby seals, and tries to help one when it gets separated from its mother, much to the protest of the scientist. The scientist of the island follow a strict code of non-interference, and expect Miranda to follow it as well. She does her best to abide by this, but one day a lost baby seal approaches her during a particularly misty day. Miranda does her best to ignore the seal, but her sympathy overcomes her. She takes the opportunity to both correct the baby seal on its path back to its mother, but also take several photos of it. One of the photos Miranda takes is actually a photo of herself petting it.

After developing the photo she took of herself interacting with the baby seal, Miranda makes a shocking discovery: she is pregnant. She makes sense of her having not noticed this by the fact that she never photographs herself, there is no full-body mirror on the island she has access to, and the harsh cold of the island demands she remands heavily bundled at nearly all times. The discovery of her pregnancy affirms her suspicion that Andrew assaulting her was real, as that would have been the only event that could reasonably explain the stage of pregnancy she was in. This discover leaves Miranda shocked, and, after heavy consideration, she decides she should leave the island before her stay is officially up.

Soon after Miranda's discovery, she discloses the information the Mick, the scientist she feels closest to. Mick does not seem particularly shocked. He does, however, offer to uphold a false narrative that he is the father of Miranda's child. Miranda hesitantly accepts. In the few weeks before Miranda leaves the Farallon Islands, Mick is killed in an accident involving the incredibly dangerous and aggressive birds that have taken over the island. After a tense conversation with Forest, Mick's secret lover, Miranda leaves the island a deeply changed person who is fully accepting her future as a mother.

Miranda
A nature photographer and the novel's protagonist. Miranda is emotionally detached leading up to her pregnancy, at which point she becomes a highly empathetic person. She has a habit of writing letters to her mother who died when she was 14. The narration of the novel is formatted to emulate these letters Miranda writes to her mother, which explains the highly self-meditative sections that appear throughout the book.

Galen
The oldest of the scientist on the island, and the scientist that has been there longer than anyone else who had ever visited the island. He specializes in studying sharks. He reveals many things about the history of the island to Miranda by giving her books about the Ferallon islands and demanding she read them.

Mick
The most friendly of the scientists on the island. He specializes in studying whales. He has a secret relationship with Forest which Miranda discovers, and offers to pose as the father of her child. He dies as a result of a bird attack.

Forest
Galen's understudy, though he seems to be interested in types of fish beyond sharks. He is Mick's secret lover.

Andrew
The scientist that assaults Miranda while she was delirious. Before he suffered an accidental death, he and Lucy were in a relationship

Lucy
The resident ornithologist. For reasons that are never made incredibly clear, she displays a harsh dislike of Miranda. She adopts and octopus and keeps it in an aquarium tank throughout the majority of the book.

Charlene
The island's resident intern. She had no apparent specialization and would help any of the scientist who needed her most. She suffers a severe injury during Miranda's stay and is forced to terminate her internship and leave the island.

The Sisters
A band of three gargantuan sharks that live around the islands. During the peak of shark season, the scientists take Miranda on a trip to go see The Sisters in action; she takes several photos and attempts to pet one of them, causing her hand to be torn up by their abrasive hides. The scientist were inspired by the witches from Macbeth when coming up with the nickname for The Sisters.

Kamikaze Pete
A particularly infamous gull that takes up residence on the porch of the cabin where Miranda and the scientists live. He draws his name from the particular way he would attack people: flying incredibly high up and then diving at people's heads with his wings fully tucked in.