Paula the Lighthouse Years

In the 1930's lighthouse keeping was dangerous and mundane, a way of life and isolation from life. Estonia was thriving and backward, unique and powerless. Women were submissive and yet the impetus for all things. And marriage was mandatory. But romantic love was the sweetest and most unlikely twist of fate.

Paula is a woman I knew in my childhood. She was an Estonian immigrant. She was a mail-order bride. Her husband was an Estonian-American, a lighthouse keeper, a wife beater and maybe a pedophile.

Paula, an educated woman in Estonia, came to this country not knowing the language or culture and was kept a virtual prisoner for more than a decade at a string of lighthouses on the rugged Alaskan coast. Paula was a woman who's life, while dictated by tradition, was full of excitement and adventure and characterized by passion and courage. And while at times there seems no end to the misery she endured, a love story unfolds.

Come along on this true journey inside real lighthouse living and one woman's life.