18-year-old Amy is mourning her mother's death when we meet her in The Lighthouse, the debut novel by Takapuna-based Christopher Parker. Her father Kevin is desperate to help her, but fears that their relationship is broken beyond repair because he was away from home so much when Amy was growing up. He takes her to the seaside town of Seabook on America's West Coast, where the big tourist attraction is an historic lighthouse. There Amy meets a troubled young man called Ryan who's unintentionally about to cause his father a whole lot of grief. Christopher Parker tells Lynn Freeman that it was seeing a lighthouse in the distance while walking along Takapuna Beach that was the starting point for the novel.