When Becky Sue Epstein and Ed Jackson collaborated to write "The American Lighthouse Cookbook," they began a culinary journey across America, dividing it into eight regions: the Northeast, the Southeast Atlantic, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the Gulf Coast, California and Hawaii, the Northwest, the Great Lakes and the Mid-Atlantic. They took in 47 lighthouses.

It’s the Mid-Atlantic and the Southeast Atlantic that are most familiar; yet in this area so well known for its maritime history, locals have visited many of these other regions and they know them well.

The writers made Virginia the final entry in the Mid-Atlantic region and began the Southeast region with Currituck Beach Lighthouse in North Carolina. Cape Henry Light is the only lighthouse in Virginia mentioned. Somehow in their vast and well done research they missed Wolf Trap, New Point Comfort and Page’s Rock plus 32 others. (Of course it’s understandable they could not include them all.)

The ...