In the last half of the nineteenth century more than one hundred women worked as primary keepers of American lighthouses. Twice as many were assistant keepers and many more worked without pay or recognition in their husband's or their father's names─this at a time when it was widely believed that the ideal woman was submissive and homebound.

The poems in A Fixed White Light enter the lives of six of these courageous and mostly forgotten women, giving readers the opportunity to experience their heroism as well as their trials in a time when they were often met with skepticism and discrimination.