The Voyage of the Morning Light

by Marina Endicott

This sweeping story is set aboard the Morning Light, a Nova Scotian merchant ship sailing through the South Pacific in 1912.

Kay and Thea are half-sisters, separated in age by almost twenty years, but deeply attached. When their stern father dies, Thea travels to Nova Scotia for her long-promised marriage to the captain of the Morning Light. But she cannot abandon her orphaned young sister, so Kay too embarks on a life-changing journey to the other side of the world.

Inspired by a true story, Marina Endicott shows us a now-vanished world in all its wonder, and in its darkness, prejudice, and difficulty, too. She also brilliantly illuminates our present time through Kay’s examination of the idea of “difference”—between people, classes, continents, cultures, customs and species.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Canada, Book Club, Family, Literary Fiction

378 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 2019

About the author

Marina Endicott was born in Golden, BC, and grew up with three sisters and a brother, mostly in Nova Scotia and Toronto. She worked as an actor and director before going to England, where she began to write fiction. After London she went west to Saskatoon, where she was dramaturge at the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre for many years before going farther west to Mayerthorpe, Alberta; she now lives in Edmonton. Her first novel, Open Arms, was short-listed for the Amazon/Books In Canada First Novel award in 2002. Her second, Good to a Fault, was a finalist for the 2008 Giller Prize and won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, Canada/Caribbean region. The Little Shadows, her latest book, longlisted for the 2011 Giller Prize, was a finalist for this year’s Governor General’s Award and will be published in the UK and Australia in spring 2012. She is at work on a new novel, Hughtopia.

Reviews

[Fran · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1911, a Nova Scotia merchant ship called the Morning Light set sail from Yarmouth under the command of Captain Francis Grant. How exciting it would be for his new wife Thea, and her half sister Kay, twenty years her junior, to voyage to the South Pacific! Thea and Francis were newly married after a ten year courtship, a long ten years. Thea had raised Kay when Kay's mother died. Now that Father had died as well, Thea was free to marry. Kay would accompany them aboard the sailing vessel.

"Kay did not care for this new entity, Francis-and Thea. She worried over what it might mean, how, her own life would be changed, or Thea's." Aboard ship she received lectures from Thea about whom she could or could not speak to, was nagged about school lessons, and told how she should spend her day. Night time brought frightful and terrible dreams, dreams of Father, principal of the Blade Lake School. "He was of the brimstone variety. She thought of the children shivering in their dormitory...even with two blankets...Bad things were done [in the name of] discipline, dignity diligence." Kay was grief stricken over the deaths of two students. After Mary's death, if Annie had been allowed to go home, the family would only have lost one child.

"Francis believed every ailment, physical or otherwise, could be cured by exposure to sea air...but Kay felt that, "No place was her place...Everywhere was places she had been taken to, or barged into. Even the Morning Light." There were, however, three lights in Kay's life. Mr. Brimner, a pastor, had signed on to spend one year teaching in Tonga and became Kay's tutor in exchange for his passage on the Morning Light. Kay was gifted a canine companion she named Pilot. Four pounds of tobacco was the exchange rate for an eight year old island boy soon to be Kay's adopted brother.

"No wind for four days, "...the life of the ship carried on at a suspended pace." The weather blew up finally as they neared the coast of Africa. "With the wind came driving rain...the storm broke properly, such heavy going through the troughs and valleys of the waves...they were forced to spend most of that day in their bunks being relentlessly rolled and slammed, until...the wind slackened...This general discomfort was complicated by quarrels below decks...".

"The Voyage of the Morning Light" by Marina Endicott, although a lovely seafaring journey, was populated by a plethora of characters, many arguably, seemingly non-essential. The main characters were not fully developed in this work of historical fiction.

Thank you W.W. Norton & Company for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Katie B · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not get into any type of good reading groove with this one. The beginning was confusing to the point in which I had to read the publisher's synopsis to figure out what was even going on. Then a little bit of the backstory is introduced about the two sisters and I start getting my hopes up. But that was short lived and I just never felt fully invested in the characters or the story. I think this is a case of a book just not being the right fit for me.

The story takes place in 1912 and from my understanding of the Author's Note this book is a work of fiction but the writer did draw some inspiration from real life events and people. This book can be placed in the historical fiction genre but much of it is the product of the author's creativity and imagination. Thea and Kay are half-sisters and there is a bit of an age gap between the two of them. After their father died, Thea put her plans of marriage on hold to relocate and raise her younger sister. Now ten years later, Thea is recently married to the captain of the Morning Light ship. The newlyweds and Kay set off for a lengthy voyage.

I felt like I was able to better understand after reading the Author's Note what she was going for in the book and I appreciate the attempt to bring something different to the historical fiction genre. Unfortunately I had a hard time with the actual execution and had a bit of a choppy reading experience. Early on I felt like it was setup for me to care about the two sisters, but ultimately I just didn't, especially in regards to Kay.

Judging by some of the other early reviews, either the story hits home with you or it is a complete miss. While I had problems with the story, it certainly doesn't mean other readers won't enjoy it.

Thank you to Netgalley and W. W. Norton Company for providing me with an advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review!

[Kerry Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won this book from a Goodreads Giveaway. Thank you, Goodreads.

Overall, I’d give this novel 2.5 stars, if possible, but in this case, I rounded down.

At times, it annoyed me and I wanted to throw it against a wall. It felt like the author was showing off in the first part, just trying to show the reader how much knowledge she has of Greek, of Micronesian languages, of sailing.

Otherwise, the story begins in 1911, with the 2 main characters, half sisters Thea and Kay on board the Morning Light, a shipping sailboat for a voyage from Canada around the world, to New Zealand, to the Islands, to China, Africa, and around the Cape back to New York. Thea is newly wed to the ship’s captain, after a ten year waiting period where she was taking care of her younger sister Kay, after Kay’s mother died. During the voyage, after one, possibly two, miscarriages, Thea ends up purchasing an 8 year old boy, Aren, for 4 pounds of tobacco and he becomes her son. Upon return to New York, Aren is admitted to the hospital for advanced TB.

The story then picks up in 1922, Canada, after the Great War. Aren was unhappy so left the family for work in Halifax, Kay is chafing at life on land and meeting societal expectations, and decided to try to return her brother to his original home, thus starting them on a new shipboard journey.

I feel like the story told here skips over the real stories - what happened to the sisters before that first voyage, the time in between, what happens to their family members after the second. The time aboard ship, shared in great detail with occasional flashbacks to explain motives, is overall boring, focused on descriptions that are well written, and the author’s obsession with whale sightings (don’t get me wrong, I’d be obsessed with that too.) I believe what’s written is the time between the real stories, while the real stories are only alluded to. While much of the language is beautiful, the story is well written, and I enjoyed many of the descriptions, I felt it was lacking in actual story and emotion. I didn’t enjoy most of the supporting characters, who seemed to add little or nothing to character and plot development. Overall, I found it disappointing.

[Richard Derus]

Nancy Pearl discusses THE VOYAGE OF THE MORNING LIGHT with Marina Endicott here:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bnqe2LtQYr4/
Fascinating half-hour.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a peaceful, subtle, careful, beautiful book about observation and colonialism, including religious colonialism. Like some other readers, I wast tempted to put this book down when it seemed slow, but the use of language and the inclusion bright detail after bright detail (one that struck me was when the author addresses the issue of Aren not needing a passport--something the astute, modern-day reader might question, but Endicott was a step ahead, solving the problem in such a skillful, understated way). This is a book that teaches (about life at sea, about language, about history), honors (humanity, individuality, friendship, loyalty, pain), and that delights (with exquisite descriptions of people, animal life, nature, and human behavior). I caught my breath so many times at true and lovely turns of phrase; even the name of the ship, Morning Light, has a particular quality to it that the entire book is embued with--a sparkling, gentle awakening, great revelation, and the promise of discovery.

A book that seemed like it would be so difficult to finish in the end became even more precious due to the length that readers can spend in this world of precise and polished turns of phrase, gentle characters (how lovely that the passengers on the ships generally get along with each other), complex and sweet relationships (between Kay and Aren, Kay and Mr. Brimner, even Kay and Francis), and heart-wrenching guilt that is bigger than one person or one family.

[Candace · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

I tried to get into this novel twice before it took off and then I absolutely loved it.

"Voyage" gets off to a rocky start with a premise that seems impossible--a newly married couple is off on their honeymoon voyage (he's a sea captain) with her much younger sister along. The sister is a strange, difficult, 12-year-old orphan who has no other relatives willing to take her on. Francis' agreement to take Thea's sister Kay along is indicative of his fine nature, and we watch the relationship between these three is beautifully wrought.

It's 1911, and the trip takes them from Nova Scotia, around the Horn, and through the South Pacific. They add people along the way, including the wonderful Mr. Brimner, who introduces Kay to ancient languages and helps her learn to balance her nature. And there's her Micronesian brother.

Thea and Kay's family managed Indian schools in Alberta and know how tragically that worked out. But is it the same to take a starving child to save his life?

Give "The Voyage of the Morning Light" another chance. It is rewarding and enlightening.

~~Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader

[Kate Belt · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for a totally absorbing read about a young woman who travels the world on a Canadian merchant sailing vessel in the early 1900s after her father has died. Her step-sister who cared for her (both their mothers had died while they were young), has married the vessel's owner. The story deals with family relationships and whether decisions, while based on good intentions, were ethical and wise and the universal questions about whether you can go home again. This Canadian author, who has won numerous awards for past works, is new to me.

[Lex · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can’t figure out what the point of this book is. Absolutely no event of significance has taken place at the 40% mark. Oh, well, the miscarriage that is alluded to in the dust jacket as a driving plot point—that happened in the span of a few pages and has not been mentioned since. Since then, the white people have traveled to ‘exotic’ places and have spoken to the other white people they have found there, namely missionaries. A stale, tired narrative to begin with, and this book adds no meaning to it.

[Cerealflakes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just not for me. I didn’t care for the writing, and I never connected with the story. Also, doily will not become a verb under my watch.

[Bonnie Goldberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a such a revelation. There are so many layers to this novel it almost begs a reread. It’s a novel about the legacy of Canada’s residential school system yet set on ships sailing or steaming around Micronesia and refracted in the “purchase” of a boy from an island and brought “home” to Nova Scotia. The book occurs almost a century ago, yet the issues raised and picked apart and gnawed through are contemporary and relevant.

[Hester · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a lovely book, with beautiful writing. The descriptions of the sea voyages are vivid and entertaining and as a reader I shared in the wonder of the characters' discoveries. The personal stories are poignant. The sister brother relationship of Kay and Aren is complicated, but filled with genuine love and understanding. Some may find this book "slow", but I savored the time I spent with it.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was impressed by the nuances in life that this book captured; there were some really beautiful and insightful passages. I also felt the book was well-researched, contained a compelling plot and theme, and that the voice of 12 year old Kay was spot on.

[Laura Trombley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a lovely sea voyage which does have a point eventually. A young girl's father was the head master of what they would have called then an "Indian Boarding School" in Canada. Many of the pupils died horribly in a TB epidemic. She grapples with the idea of whether or not the pupils were "better off" receiving a European education in light of the fact that they died away from their families. The book begins a couple years later and they are on a jaunty sail around the globe when they acquire a seven year old Micronesian boy. The family treats him as a son and takes them back to Canada. This 400 page book was really a 200 page book. The descriptions were lovely but the denouement didn't quite reach any great peak.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kay has been raised mostly by her older half-sister Thea, but now (1911) Kay is 12 years old, & Thea is recently married to her long-time fiance, Francis, who is a commercial sea captain. The plan is for Kay to go live with some aunts, but when that doesn't work out, she ends up joining her sister & brother-in-law on a months-long sea journey, spending time especially in the South Seas. This journey is life-changing in many ways, & the author captures the lives, the changes, & the personalities so skilfully that I thought this was a just about perfect book– the kind where you're sorry when it's over.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kay comes of age on an around the world sailing trip with her sister and new husband, the captain of the Morning Light. Issues of race and religion are frequently encountered along with the normal perils of travel. The characters were richly developed; most had flaws but were still endearing. I also enjoyed the history, the travel to foreign lands and the issues facing folks in the early twentieth century. I particularly enjoyed listening to the author's thoughts during our book club. I will look for more books from this author!

[Gayla Bassham · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quiet, soothing read. Others have complained that it is slow, but I found myself absorbed in the rhythms of the book and had no issues with the pacing. Kay and Thea are both beautifully realized -- Aren less so, which was disappointing but also worked given that he remains a cipher to most of the characters in the book. Recommended if you enjoy historical fiction, especially if you have a thing for fiction set aboard ships.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

This voyage was endless for me. One of the main characters, Kay, spent long days studying Greek, drinking wormwood tea and walking along the small ship’s decks. Although the writing is beautiful and expressive, there was very little action in this historical novel. I struggled though this “interminable” voyage!

[Elle SeasonsofStories · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this. But just couldn’t get into it! I had a hard time with the quickly switching narrator and really didn’t buy Kay as a twelve year old.
Also... the point of the story is the adoption of a native islander child and the devastating consequences that good white intentions can have. But it seemed like it was going to be crammed into the last third of a long book... making it more about other things, in my view. Only got through a hundred pages and skimmed the ending.

[Teresa Borden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I have read this year and I am delighted to have discovered a new Canadian author. I will definitely seek out her previous and future novels.

I was completely absorbed by this story of a young woman who first travels the world on a Canadian merchant sailboat in 1911 when she is twelve, almost thirteen, and accompanying her recently married sister whose husband is the captain of the boat.

With universal themes of belonging, inequality and prejudice, I loved this tale in two parts. The first is of the voyage itself down to the South Seas and then up to China before heading home. All of the wonders of the vessel and the interminable days on a variable and wondrous sea are experienced through the eyes of young Kay and, to some extent, her older half-sister, Thea, who had taken over her care when Kay was a newly orphaned infant. For that reason, Thea had to postpone her marriage and then decide to take her sister along on her honeymoon journey when she didn’t fit in with other relatives in Nova Scotia.

The second part of the book leaps ahead ten years in time, after the Great War, and follows Kay as a young woman who sets out on another journey with her adopted brother (who was traded for tobacco during the original journey) in an attempt to right what she perceives as a wrong when he was taken from his impoverished family as a boy.

Beautifully written and based in part on a true story, this work of fiction is mesmerizing. I could feel the movement of the boat and smell the spices of far-away lands as I read, enthralled. There are also some very important ideas about colonialism and cultural differences. Indeed, the original title when this was published in Canada, was ‘The Difference.’ I so wish I could continue along with Kay in her life journey after the end of the novel, just to see what other extraordinary things await her.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book , which tells the story of two long sea voyages to the South Pacific, but in spite of Marina Endicott's lovely writing the story just didn't grab me. The first voyage, in 1912, begins as newly married Thea brings her much younger half-sister along on what appears to be a honeymoon voyage with her ship's-captain husband, attempting to remove the younger sister from the unhappiness of an unpleasant childhood, their father's recent death, and a couple of spinster aunts who intend to control her life. The round-the-world trip passes, about a third of the way through the book, through Micronesia, where the older sister, Thea (who has miscarried twice on the trip), purchases a young boy for four tins of tobacco and unofficially adopts him as her son. They younger sister, Kay, and the boy, Aren, develop a deep friendship. On the second, voyage, in 1922, Kay and Aren return to the South Pacific. The main characters in the book, despite their sad backstories, are not terribly sympathetic -- they don't like themselves or anyone else very much. An overarching theme is finding the ability to forgive oneself and others, and it appears that is very difficult for almost everyone in this story. There's little action, except for the occasional story at sea, and there was little dramatic tension. It was hard to stick with the story for any extended period of time -- so progress , for me, was slow, and I found it to tend toward boring at times. NO awful, but not my favorite.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating 2.7

Unfortunately, for me, except for the last 100 pages, this book was a grind. It did explain the workings of a ship journey around the world. That too could be a grind. The last 100 pages developed the relationships and focused on racism even in 1912. Finally, the story of "family" and "home" are touching.


This sweeping story is set aboard the Morning Light, a Nova Scotian merchant ship sailing through the South Pacific in 1912.

Kay and Thea are half-sisters, separated in age by almost twenty years, but deeply attached. When their stern father dies, Thea travels to Nova Scotia for her long-promised marriage to the captain of the Morning Light. But she cannot abandon her orphaned young sister, so Kay too embarks on a life-changing journey to the other side of the world.

Inspired by a true story, Marina Endicott shows us a now-vanished world in all its wonder, and in its darkness, prejudice, and difficulty, too. She also brilliantly illuminates our present time through Kay’s examination of the idea of “difference”—between people, classes, continents, cultures, customs and species

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to be able to immerse myself in this novel about an early 20th century sailing vessel's voyage to the South Pacific, told from the points of view of the newlywed captain's wife and her younger sister. Unfortunately, I found it a bit of a slog. I was grateful to learn a bit more about the Canadian government's running of boarding schools for indigenous children, meant to erase their native cultures and assimilate the children. The girls' father had run such a school. (I'd first heard about these schools just recently through a subplot in the Anne of Green Gables Netflix series.) The book also dealt with the purchase-yes, purchase- of a little boy by the newlyweds on one of the islands they visited. I felt that the author could have explored that issue a lot more thoroughly; it seems like that could have been a novel in itself.

[Alex Rodewald · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it's certainly written in beautiful language, this book left me wanting a bit more from both the characters and the story. I never felt like I was truly inside Kay's head in any particular way, and the vague allusions to her past never really became as significant a part of the narrative as I might have expected. It also didn't seem like Endicott does much to build her themes until the last third of the book, and a lot of it seems to be story for story's sake.

I didn't dislike this book by any means, but neither did I find it particularly captivating.

[Jeanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the story line was interesting, it was just too slow moving for me. Nothing much exciting happens throughout the entire book. It's just very even paced. It needed more ups and downs for me. I did slog through it but just barely. It's just too hard for me to bail out. To clarify, I typically LOVE historical fiction, but I find most authors add a little suspense or romance to keep the reader interested. That is not the case with this one.

[Archd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goes into too much detail - and stays on one topic too long. Didn’t finish.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Character Kay annoyed me almost as much
As she annoyed her sister Thea!

[Joy Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

Historical details interesting but this book is Bleak! So many stories of bad things going on. Couldn’t finish.

[Pam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked this book all right, but it seemed to drag in places. It would have been better if it had been shorter and had focused less on the details and more on the action and the characters.

[Elderberrywine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kay and Thea, her newly married and much older half-sister, set off one morning in 1911 aboard the sailing ship, The Morning Light. The ship is a trading vessel bound for the South Seas, and captained by Thea’s new husband, Frances. Never having been to sea before, Kay does not realize, at first, that she has found the place in which she is most at home, in all the world. Thirteen years old, and gleefully barefoot, she is a born sailor, and delights in her escape from her limited life in Yarmouth. And quite fortunately, Mr. Brimner also happens to be aboard. He is shipping out to a missionary position in the South Seas, but Thea engages him to be a tutor for her sister. Latin, they both agree, is tedious, but Greek? What could be better than the tales of a sea-faring folk?

About half way through the voyage, they briefly pass by a Polynesian island where the native people are clearly starving, but all the men want to trade for is tobacco. They are so desperate for it that they pass off a young boy to pay for it. Frances and Thea accept him since he clearly will soon starve to death here. Thea has had a few miscarriages at this point, and accepts him as a son. And Kay is delighted with her new kid brother, promptly welcoming him into their lives, and teaching him to speak and read English, as well as Greek. But there is another element at play. Thea as a child, along with her late missionary father, were involved in the Native American boarding schools in Canada, a tragic situation. And now she is still torn between the desire to do good, and the awareness that previous attempts were very much not that. This presents the moral dilemma of the book in that wanting to do good may well not be good.

The best part of the book though, for me, was the shipboard scenes. Although there is danger, and an often harsh life, there is beauty as well. Here is a bit from the solar eclipse they experience in the midst of the Pacific. As the sun starts to slip into darkness, “In the weird descending twilight, the water was full of shapes. Whales, many of them, had come to the surface, their heads gazing up . . . A head and another head, another - dotted across a wide space, twenty or thirty dolphins and whale had risen from the deeps, all looking up into the heavens together to where the sky was growing murkier, yellower, more somber and burst umber every minute". Magical.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marina Endicott is a talented writer. Her prose and skill in creating a real sense of time and place is second to none. The Difference (now apparently titled The Voyage of the Morning Light) does not disappoint. Set in 1912 a 12-year-old-girl and her recently married and much older half sister embark on a voyage from Nova Scotia through the South Pacific. Kay, is orphaned and is now being raised by her much older sister. Thea, finally able to marry Francis, Captain of The Morning Light, has elected to bring her young sister with her on its nearly year-long merchant voyage. Beautifully crafted, the novel ebbs and flows as one would imagine the sailing ships of that time did as they navigated the world’s oceans and seas. Kay is not an easy child. Precocious and questioning she challenges her sister’s beliefs and way of living often. Troubled by nightmares from her time in an Alberta residential school ran by the girl’s strict and unyielding pastor father, Kay suffers nightmares and bouts of melancholy and anger as she tries to figure out her place in the world. Thea’s exasperation with her sister’s behaviors only serves to strengthen Kay’s fury with the injustices of society, compounded after Thea purchases a young boy as her own child from a poor and isolated island for the price of some tobacco. Kay grows close to her “adopted” nephew as she does to her dog, Pilot , that was also picked up on the voyage and her tutor, a minister named Mr. Brimner whom she respects and grows to love. Otherwise she remains sullen and judgmental throughout the story. The novel’s strength is in the chronicling of the natural beauty so much a part of an ocean voyage and the wonder and awe with which Kay experiences it. However her anger and frustration with the ways of the world carry on into her early adult years and, although understandable and relatable to some extent, wear thin after awhile; Thus making the last half to a third of the novel (set 10 years after the Morning Light’s Voyage) overlong and plodding. The Difference, though beautifully written, lacks some of the brilliant character development I found in the other Endicott novels I read and thoroughly enjoyed: Good to a Fault, The Little Shadows and Close to Hugh. Though, for any fan of Marina Endicott, historical novels or sea adventures, The Difference is a book worth your time.