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Fiction

Ward Just — Rodin's Debutante
This is a true story, or true as far as it goes. Ogden Hall School for Boys never would have existed were it not for the journey that two Chicago girls made to Paris with their mother. The eldest girl had her head sculpted in marble by the great Rodin in his atelier at the Dépôt des Marbres, a bust from his own hand and chisel.
Excerpted from The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman. Copyright © 2012 by M.L. Stedman. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Excerpted from The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman. Copyright © 2012 by M.L. Stedman. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
On the day of the miracle, Isabel was kneeling at the cliff ’s edge, tending the small, newly made driftwood cross. A single fat cloud snailed across the late-April sky, which stretched above the island in a mirror of the ocean below. Isabel sprinkled more water and patted down the soil around the rosemary bush she had just planted.
“. . . and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” she whispered.

Caleb’s Crossing is inspired by a true story. It is, however, a work of imagination. What follows is the history, insofar as it is documented: the slender scaffolding on which I have rested my imaginative edifice.