The Misremembered Lighthouse
Released by Drake Valley Press, September 2025
Inspired by the American Revolution in North Carolina and the role of Scottish immigrants
Historian and author Hayley Hunter returns from Ireland and her adventures from April in the Back of Beyond. She rents a lighthouse in Southeastern North Carolina to serve as a base while she researches her next book and continues her genealogy research.
The isolated lighthouse seems to come alive with secrets from the past. The renovated structure replaced an original wood structure that only functioned for twenty years during the Revolutionary War, before the channel was diverted. While the old lighthouse may be long gone, ghosts remain.
Hayley becomes increasingly obsessed with finding out why the spirit of Jonathan Corbyn, the only lighthouse keeper, lingers between realms. When she discovers he is not the only ghost, but she also shares her home with Native Americans and a sinister presence, she places her own life in danger to learn the secrets long hidden. When her Irish boyfriend, Shay MacGregor, joins her, he brings Irish customs to communicate with the dead, but might have unleashed malevolent spirits.
Their search will take them into a world of spies, double agents, and espionage at the dawn of American democracy.
Settings and plot were inspired by:
- a real lighthouse in North Carolina that was only in use for twenty years in the Revolutionary War era
- the Scots from Cross Creek who were called up by the British to fight against the colonialists
- a tiny, forgotten crossroads in rural North Carolina settled by Scots
- Native American mounds found throughout North Carolina
- a Native American custom of assisting runaway slaves
- the Widow Moore’s Creek Bridge and the current site of the Moore’s Creek National Battlefield
- the legend of the Maco ghost