BRIGHT ISLAND is a book for young people and for adults who find beauty in the early morning of life. It is the story of an island-born girl, Thankful Curtis, and the magic of the island which always calls her home. Here she lives with her Scotch mother, her Maine father, and the pervading presence of the sea captain grandfather who lives again in her rather than in the four brothers.

From her island, and her sailboat, and her staunch friend Dave, Thankful has to go away finally to school. She finds the uncharted waters of a sophisticated school difficult to navigate. Through her experiences with Selina, the roommate who ignores her, Robert, who charms her with his gaiety and his grace, and Orin Fletcher, with his knife-like tongue and tenderness towards her, her compass veers around at last to its true north.

It is a book where each character lives with abiding reality for the reader, where Bright Island lies vivid under the winter lashings or in quiet summer seas, where people work out their lives with inevitable truth. Bright Island stands for home, and the kind of complete life where an individual has control of the elements necessary to life and well being.

From the dust jacket