Happy Advent Season. To celebrate here is an excerpt for you from Part One. The passage is referring to Angel's Gate lighthouse in San Pedro, California.

Mama shrugged away, "You love the clarinet more than me."

Daddy didn't speak. Ceci wanted him to tell Mama that it wasn't true, that he loved them both more than the clarinet. Holding her breath, she peered up through the oval rear window: black clouds blowing in like ghosts from the sea. The lighthouse circled its green lights and sounded its horn.

The lighthouse, like an angel guardian, wings of white cloud, had held up her green lantern over the harbor for as long as Ceci could remember.  She had learned to count by it.  The rhythm, one to thirty, and then the warning horn. One to thirty again, and the sad horn once more.  The foghorn drummed the heartbeat of this sailor town--the music under everything.