And now he has a postcard of a lighthouse built just six months ago, that was first written nearly one hundred years ago, by a stranger who seems to know him very well.

But he also has flashes of a life he cannot remember and of a world that never existed - a world where English is spoken in England, and not French. He is a British slave, one of thousands throughout the French Empire. Joe has never left England, never even left London. On the front is a lighthouse - Eilean Mor, in the Outer Hebrides. The postcard has been held at the sorting office for ninety-one years, waiting to be delivered to Joe Tournier. She masterfully weaves mystery and plot twists with a constant theme of loss into an ultimate tale of love and rediscovery.Signed Bookplate Edition - A Standard Edition is available here Pulley combines romance with fiction in this genre-bending novel, managing to turn history into a time-travelling epic. While an open-minded reader may guess at some of the book’s twists before they’re revealed, personally it made the book no less enjoyable to read for the mere fact that they’re clever. He leaves Joe with a warning to leave the lighthouse and never return but the two soon meet again: this time in the year 1807 after he’s kidnapped by the crew onboard a ship looking for an electrical engineer to help them win a war and change the outcome of a future Joe had been taken from. Shortly after arriving, Joe receives a visit from a mysterious man he pulls from the water on a stormy night. When Joe enquires, he discovers that construction on the lighthouse had just been finished.Īnd so Joe’s quest to find answers for questions he can hardly form begins, taking him from the attic room he shares with his precious daughter and a wife he does not love to the seemingly haunted lighthouse on the Outer Hebrides. It had been held at the sorting office for 91 years with clear delivery instructions.

M.” reads the postcard which depicts a lighthouse in Scotland. “Dearest Joe, come home, if you remember. It is also illegal to write - or own - anything written in English, a predicament when a postcard, which unearths more questions than answers, arrives addressed to Joe. He remembers being married to a woman named Madeline but after laying claim to him at the hospital, Joe’s French master takes him home where he lives as a slave with his wife named Alice.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley