Walk across the sea. (Paperback Fiction).

FLETCHER, Susan. Walk across the sea. Simon & Schuster, Aladdin. 214p. c2001. 0-689-85707-1. $4.99. J

To quote from the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, November 2001:

On the Pacific coast, a lighthouse stands on an isthmus, with a family living there and tending the light. It is a time in the 19th century when Chinese immigrants on the West Coast are treated poorly and have few rights. This is the setting for Fletcher's novel about Eliza Jane, who helps her father in the lighthouse, One night, when he had left her in charge, Eliza's mother goes into premature labor, and the baby dies. Another crisis confronts the family during a wild storm. There is a rule that no other person can stay on the little island with the lighthouse; but during the storm a young Chinese boy takes shelter there, knowing he will be persecuted by the townspeople if he comes out of hiding. Eliza gets food to him, with her mother's help, and during the storm, with seawater flooding their home, she has to reveal the boy's presence to her father. The confrontation forces the family to make a choice, with their job at the lighthouse at stake-yet it is a moral choice that has even larger repercussions. It is always a difficult job to present a story of prejudice from the majority point of view: here we have to travel along Eliza's own journey from ignorance and prejudice to enlightenment--not a good position from the minority's point of view. In that sense, the story would be more acceptable to Chinese Americans if it had been from the Chinese boy's point of view. Fletcher has done a lot of research about anti-Chinese prejudices at that place in that time. so the facts are accurate; and Eliza and a few other whites are appalled at the injustice shown the Chinese neighbors, so they represent the "right" moral stance. Since the main reason whites shunned the Chinese was because they considered them "heathens," the Bible is quoted copiously in this novel for both that point of view and the one Eliza adopts, based on Jesus' statements about showing compassion for those in need. Eliza's faith in a loving God has already been shaken mightily by the death of her baby sister, and that strengthens her need to understa nd the moral implications of Christian faith. Fletcher describes Eliza's dilemma well, and she also writes about the exotic lighthouse setting in vivid language, helping her readers feel as though they are there on the little island with Eliza.