Peter Hill and his family start on a journey which takes them into the world of lighthouses. He begins that journey when he applies to become a lighthouse keeper and the journey takes the reader from his time as a spare man through to the time when automation and redundancy casts the role of lighthouse keeper into the history books.It is not his story alone as the whole family take on the adventure, Margaret takes up the story on what it was like for the wives and family of a lighthouse keeper.