Meet Jesse Whitmore: The Woman at the Heart of the Bluff

When Jesse Whitmore first appeared in my mind, she was stepping off a boat. One carpetbag in hand. The weight of the past in the other.

I didn’t know her name yet. I didn’t know her history. But I knew she wasn’t here to be found — she was here to disappear.

She arrived in 1873, in the hush of a recovering coast. The war was over, but its echoes still lingered in the creak of the docks, the tilt of rebuilt roofs, the quiet way people measured strangers. Behind her, something unspoken. Ahead of her, a lighthouse still rising — its light not yet ready to shine.

That unfinished tower became her mirror. Incomplete. Uncertain. But full of purpose waiting to be lit.

Jesse is not a woman of grand speeches or easy smiles. She’s observant. Careful. She knows how to make herself small when she must, yet there’s a strength in her that even she doesn’t recognize at first. Her journey in By the Light of the Bluff is not about sudden transformation. It’s about the slow, steady work of finding solid ground — in a time, and a place, that doesn’t offer it freely.

Her name, too, carries weight. I chose “Jesse” after the figure in the Bible — the father of King David, a man whose legacy was less about power and more about what he set in motion. My Jesse is not a king, nor even a man, but like her namesake, she becomes the quiet root of something greater. Scripture says, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit” (Isaiah 11:1). That felt fitting for a woman whose journey may begin in shadows, but will plant the seeds for what’s to come.

Jesse carries secrets. She also carries hope. And in a season of rebuilding, both will matter.

Because sometimes the bravest thing you can do isn’t to run toward the light. It’s to stand still long enough for the light to find you.