The Edge of the Earth

A Novel

By: Christina Schwarz

Narrated by: Candace Thaxton

Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

In 1898, a woman forsakes the comfort of home and family for a love that takes her to a remote lighthouse on the wild coast of California. What she finds at the edge of the earth, hidden between the sea and the fog, will change her life irrevocably.

Trudy, who can argue Kant over dinner and play a respectable portion of Mozart's Serenade in G major, has been raised to marry her childhood friend and assume a life of bourgeois comfort in Milwaukee. She knows she should be pleased, but she's restless instead, yearning for something she lacks even the vocabulary to articulate. When she falls in love with enigmatic and ambitious Oskar, she believes she's found her escape from the banality of her preordained life.

But escape turns out to be more fraught than Trudy had imagined. Alienated from family and friends, the couple moves across the country to take a job at a lighthouse at Point Lucia, California - an unnervingly isolated outcropping, trapped between the ocean and hundreds of miles of inaccessible wilderness. There they meet the light station's only inhabitants - the formidable and guarded Crawleys. In this unfamiliar place, Trudy will find that nothing is as she might have predicted, especially after she discovers what hides among the rocks.

Gorgeously detailed, swiftly paced, and anchored in the dramatic geography of the remote and eternally mesmerizing Big Sur, The Edge of the Earth is a magical story of secrets and self-transformation, ruses and rebirths. Christina Schwarz, celebrated for her rich evocation of place and vivid, unpredictable characters, has spun another haunting and unforgettable tale.

©2013 Christina Schwarz (P)2013 Simon & Schuster Audio

Irritating characters, good setting, great reading

Schwarz does an incredible job creating people and settings. The lighthouse is practically tangible, and the book is worth reading just for the setting. I tend to have a low threshold for obnoxious characters, and this book has many--so many, I was practically grinding my teeth. However, Candace Thaxton does a great job breathing life into the story, which ties together lives from the past and present.

Surprise Ending

An abrupt, surprising ending to a book that started out slowly. The character development was terrific and the author was able to give sufficient descriptive information about the surroundings and the people without going overboard with the adjectives.

Not worth the time!

This story was so flat and uninteresting! I really can't believe people have rated it so high. The characters are blah and the story lacks depth and complexity. Don't waste your time and money here!

Too Slow For Me

Really struggled to finish this one. Mever connected with the characters or setting and was never certain about the storyline. it was well performed and well written in many ways but I just didn't care for the story or characters.

Terrible narrator

Not sure how this got 4 stars. The narrator was unable to smoothly deliver a single sentence. She emphasized a single word in each one and her staccato style was beyond annoying. The story never made much sense and there were few characters to connect with - even the protagonist, who only showed some spine in the last chapter. The usually enchanting setting of lighthouse stories was not enough to hold this mess of a narrative.