1930s Denver resembles a city not too far removed from the era of the Wild West. At the height of the Great Depression, the city became a magnet for people of all backgrounds looking for work and opportunity, which was met by a fierce backlash from the city’s growing Klan population. At the center of this tension are Luz and her older brother Diego, who has recently been forced to flee Denver after he impregnates his white girlfriend. Just shy of 18, Luz finds a job as a secretary in a Greek lawyer’s office who has made a name for himself representing people who have been abused by the police and the Klan. Interspersed throughout this story are chapters dating back to the late 19th century featuring three generations of Luz’s ancestors. Readers experience the trauma that runs deep in Luz’s Native American and Mexican family as their rights and land are taken from them with the westward expansion of white settlers. I picked this book up after seeing it recommended by Ann Patchett. A western multi-generational historical saga is fairly different from the books that I typically read, and I enjoyed getting to see what life was like in Denver and the Lost Territory of Colorado in an era not too long ago. I did feel that the book was not as literary as advertised, equating Luz’s relationship challenges with the actual hardships and traumas experienced by her ancestors.

Woman of Light is a great coming of age story of Luz, an indigenous woman growing up in 1930s Denver, Colorado. I love how, throughout the book, her family's past is woven into and shapes her understanding of the present. In Luz's case, it is through her gift as a seer, but I think we are all given glimpses into our family's past in different ways as we grow and begin to piece together the stories we create of ourselves. More broadly, although this book is fiction, I felt like it was an extremely insightful and honest look into Denver's deeply segregated past by casting a rare light on an early urban Indigenous experience.

I'm thankful to have been given the opportunity to read an Advance Reader Copy of this book and cannot stop recommending it to all readers interested in the West.

Woman of Light is the story of Luz and her family, a story that keeps happening still in this time and age, an everyday person here in the United States still living the same situations as Luz and her family racism, prejudice, and more especially if you're Chicano, Mexican or you have dark skin.

Woman of light is a story that takes place in different years starting from 1868, to 1933 and so on. Luz comes from a family that has the ability of sight, most of the women n her family have this ability. For generations, this gift has helped them so much but now it seems like nothing can save them from the Klan atrocities.

Luz and Lizzet are trying to live their lives and make everything they can to help their families but all they encounter is racism, and rejection even Diego, her brother had to endure many atrocities for liking a white woman, the amount of suffering and rejection luz and her family live are incomprehensible and very sad. and at the same time, it was very refreshing to see the power Luz need to be able to help her family.

I cry so many times with this book, I couldn't understand many of the terrible behaviors in some of the characters but in the end, Luz was a light at the end of the day for many.

I really enjoyed the clairvoyant part of the book it made it even more intriguing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the advanced copy of Woman of Light in exchange for my honest review.

3 stars rounded up from 2.5

Sadly, I just felt “meh” about this book. The timeline bounces back and forth but most of the story takes place in 1934 in Denver. We follow an extended family, centered on two cousins, Luz and Lizette. I never warmed up to either of them or Luz’ brother Diego. Their aunt Maria Josie was a more interesting character by far but we don’t get enough of her. The flashbacks to past generations were good but were told in small bits and pieces.

The author makes clear that Denver (and the rest of the general area) was not a welcoming place for those who weren’t Anglo (white). There are scenes with the KKK and many establishments have signs saying “No Mexicans, blacks or gooks allowed.” A very ugly part of American history. The advertised tea leaf reading was a very minor aspect of the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and One World for the opportunity to read an advance readers copy of this book, although I’m late to it. All opinions are my own.

LOVED THIS BOOK. I want it to be a series, but also don't think any others could be better. Magical, emotional, and dark.

ARC from the publisher via NetGalley, but the opinions are by own.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Woman of Light is a beautiful family history beginning with The Sleepy Prophet of Pardona Pueblo to the Fourth Generation of the family consisting of Luz (literally the Woman of Light) who reads the future in tea leaves and her brother Diego, a snake charmer. While the story is reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude which also follows generations of a family using magical realism, Fajardo-Anstine’s novel goes farther by showing race discrimination over time. I particularly appreciated the author’s focus of race discrimination in Denver since it is a history which is only now being openly discussed. My only criticism is the use of alternating chapters between past and present which early on drag the story down, but then the story moves to resolution much too quickly in the last 10% of the book. Overall though, novel succeeds on many levels and engages the hearts and mind of readers. Highly recommended!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an early ARC of this book.

The author, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, comes from a long line of storytellers and she honors those who came before her in her latest novel, Woman of Light. The novel is a multigenerational family saga centering around two main characters, Luz and Diego, who find themselves in a hopeless situation and have to move to Denver in the 1930s to live with their aunt. While there, one of Luz's side hustles is to read leaves (tell customers their futures) and Diego is a snake charmer. Her family before her resided in the Lost Territories and had lives that are described as vividly as Luz and Diego's.
Fajardo-Anstine brings this novel to life in sensory-rich details. She has the ability to paint a picture and leave the reader wanting more. I am never put off by books that switch from the present to the past, especially when I get a clearer view of the whole story.
It's hard for me to read historical fiction that has so much truth behind it because it hurts to see how ignorant and unfair people can be to one another. I am always hoping, searching, and turning the page for a positive ending or outcome. This novel definitely has some moments of heartache, just like real life. However, it also illustrates unconditional love, perseverance, mysticism, courage, and hopefulness.
I enjoyed this book and overall found it well written. There were times, however, that a storyline would abruptly stop and I would question if the character would act that way or wonder why the story felt disjointed at that juncture.
Overall, Woman of Light is a lush, immersive historical novel worth the time to read.
*A special thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

Woman of Light follows a young woman, Luz Lopez, in 1930s Denver as she experiences visions of her past ancestors in the Lost Territory while navigating her own adult life.

Honestly, the title, the description, and the cover all looked blah to me. This was not one I was dying to pick up, but I’m glad I did. Kali Fajardo-Anstine has a gift for writing narrative that I just didn’t want to stop reading. I would absolutely pick up another book by this author.

That said, there were some flaws that made this a good book rather than a great book. While I appreciated that the different time periods and narratives of different family members added suspense to the story, it also made it difficult to follow. There were also scenes that didn’t feel true to the period, such as a proposal scene and wedding scenes. They felt as if they were in modern day America, not 1930s Denver. The ending also left me confused, underwhelmed, and wondering what just happened.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the advanced copy!

3.5 stars.
Following several generations of a woman’s family, Kali Fajardo-Anstine tells a tale of deep connections, bigotry, identity, and the history of Denver.

Luz, whose family is at the centre of this story, lives in bigoted and segregated Denver. Luz has visions of her ancestors, and we get vivid stories of her family's past, and how they came to be in this part of the world. In the present, Luz works as a secretary for a lawyer.

The glimpses we get of Luz's relatives were fascinating, and actually, I would have loved more time spent in these scenes. I also felt the transitions to the past and back were a little confusing.

I found it actually a little hard to connect with Luz; Luz has terrible taste in men, but I'm not sure if I disliked them mainly because of how slight their characterizations were. That aside, I really like the relationships Luz had with her friend Lizette and her brother Diego.

I went into this book with high hopes, and though I loved many elements, I was not as entranced as I was hoping to be.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Random House Publishing Group for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Thanks so much to the publisher and to NetGalley for giving me access to this book. Historical Fiction are a favorite genre in our library. It is great to have more and more books that give us the perspective of Indigenous voices. I am giving this novel a strong recommendation.

DNF - I tried to read this twice & at that point I know I have to accept that the story isn't for me. I wanted to love this; it fits into genres that I adore but, I could not engage my brain into wanting to continue reading this. Maybe it was the writing style or the story or, something else but, ultimately, I wasn't the ideal reader for this. I'm glad to see so many other people have found their way to this book & love it.

Initially I was a bit put off by the very dense description and language, but the characters were interesting so I kept going. The going became easier and by the end I was won over. A good read.

The sense of place in this book was strong, which is something I look for in fiction. Fajardo-Anstine clearly loves her home city of Denver. The characters were interesting.

This book was beautifully told. Personally there was something missing that im not 100% sure I could put my finger on and that is why I gave it 4 stars and not 5. I would recommend this book because I think more people need to read it.

Woman of Light tells the story of Luz “Little Light” Lopez in 1930s Denver as she navigates both her life as a laundress and secretary and as the keeper of her family’s history through her visions of the past. She can read tea leaves which I for one find very interesting. This book switches between Luz’s current life in Denver and her relatives stories going back three more generations in the nearby Lost Territory.

The best part of this book is the impressive characters author Kali Fajardo-Anstine was able to craft. We connect with Luz, her aunt Maria Josie, brother Diego, and cousin Lizette and pull for them all. I did find, however, that I connected more with Luz’s story line than a few of the stories from the past. The constant switch between Luz in her current life verses her ancestors felt disjointed at times.

My take away from this novel is that our past always informs our future and it’s important to keep history alive. The familial bonds in this story are strong and as I mentioned the character development of those in Luz’s family in her present story line were especially nuanced. Fajardo-Anstine also has a gift when it comes to describing scenes so vividly that I could picture them all in my mind. A good read for those interested in multi-generational novels or learning more about minority families in the 1930s West. Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC.

I've never been so excited for a book and Woman of Light lived up to the hype. Set in the southwest, the book follows multiple generations of a family and the many storylines each of them is involved in. Woman of Light is a western, but more than that, a book about love, about family, and about the risks we take in pursuit of them both. Loved & savored every page, already looking forward to my next read through of the book.

Woman of Light follows five generations of the Lopez family, over the years as the land they live on transitions from The Lost Territory to present-day (or, an early twentieth century version of) Denver. Everything focuses around Luz (the titular woman of “light”), a tea leaf reader and seer, in the 1930s. She lives with her aunt, Maria Josie, brother, Diego, and is best friends with her cousin, Lizette. Over the course of a few years, we watch as her brother must leave town for his own safety, Lizette plans her wedding (and wedding dress!), Maria Josie settles into her life (and love), and Luz struggles with both her feelings (the “safe and comfortable” Avel or her boss, a young attorney – and womanizer – David) and what she wants for her life. This family drama all unfolds against the backdrop of racial unrest and police brutality, told in turn with the stories of the past (the lives of Luz’s parents and grandparents), that brought the Lopez family to where they are today.

Y’all, I badly wanted to love this book more than I did. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. It had so much promise, and so many of the themes were in line with those that I loved from Sabrina & Corina, but there was just something missing, or just a bit off, here for me. A lot of it came down to the writing. It was fine, good even, in an overall sense. But the issue for me was that this was marketed as an adult book and it just read *so young.* I mean the themes were incredibly mature. The main characters were 18 (plus or minus) and (especially for the time period) were definitely considered adults and lived adult lives/responsibilities. And yet, for all that, this book reads *so* young, and not just like YA young, but like…naive, young. The sweetness and innocence to Luz started fine, but as things began to happen in her life, and she “saw” more and more of her family’s history, the fact that it stuck around felt somewhat incongruous. It was an interesting narrative juxtaposition, the presentation of such intense, serious topics (CW: racism/slurs, animal cruelty, colonialism, hate crimes, police violence, misogyny, and more) in such an innocent voice. It was kind of like a tall tale or western themed fable: there’s a message about society, but it’s passed on within a sort of fantasy/fairytale-like narrative. And I can see what it was going for, I think. But it never really landed for me.

Also, and perhaps this is because I have recently read some other truly phenomenal, and much longer, family saga type novels (The Arsonists’ City and The Love Songs of W.E.B. du Bois, for example), even the intergenerational family story and drama seemed…too surface-level and a bit too simple. So it could easily just be a situation of bad timing and/or not the right reader, but this one just didn’t quite hit the spot.

I do want to recognize a few things that were really well done and/or that I respected, even if this wasn’t a new favorite read. I enjoyed the highlighting of a time/place combination that I do not know much about, from an intersectional perspective. The predominant “wild west” and “depression era” narratives (along with most everything in our nation) are white and cis-hetero. This was a fantastic highlighting of the sheer variety of peoples that make up this nation/land, obviously focused on Indigenous and Chicano families here, but with inclusion of other races and nationalities (Asian, recent European immigrants) and how they intermingled (or didn’t, as it were).

Fajardo-Anstine does a wonderful job, too, of showing how the intolerance of our nation was universal and widespread; the Klan was not just a Southern thing and police violence (and upholding of the legacy of white supremacy) has been endemic against all minority populations since…well, since the arrival of white people on the continent. As has the fight for real justice. I enjoyed seeing some recognizable aspects (like, did I correctly interpret the reference to the “start” of Red Rocks as we know it, as a performance venue, today?). And, there were some vibes similar to When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky that were also really interesting, like looking at these less-well-known parts of history (a similar time period, though very different parts of the country) and some really unique show-boat type jobs (in this case, snake charming and tea reading and sharpshooting). Last, is it just me, or were there some aro coding/vibes around Luz? Whether or not it was purposeful, that’s how I chose to read her, and I liked it.

I’m not sure how to wrap up my thoughts about this novel. It was fascinating, as far as exposure, for me as a reader. I was interested in it, for the most part; the characters were original, the plot was well-paced, the themes were compelling and the emotions were correctly placed (remembrance, anger, hope, heartbreak, contentment, etc.). The sense of place and time was spectacular. Plus, the ending was…*chef’s kiss*…as far as looking towards a brighter future while still shining a light on the past/ancestors. To that end, the title was also spot on with its meaning and named-based wordplay. And yet, it felt sort of under-developed in the way it was all brought together. Or told in the wrong voice. Or none of that and it just wasn’t the right fit for me. Who knows.

DNF 48%

Absolute snoozefest. Tried really hard to be open-minded about this piece but the writing didn't appeal to me all. Too little character development and not enough plot.

Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. Pub Date: June 7, 2022. Rating: 🌟🌟. I love historical fiction and I was excited to dig into this book because it was a fresh contribution to this genre. Unfortunately this novel following five generations of Indigenous Chicano family members in the American West did not deliver for me. I felt the story did more telling than showing, felt drawn out and had a lot of bouncing around of timelines and characters making the story not flow as well as I wanted it to. Thanks to #NetGalley and #randomhousepublishinggroup for this e-arc in exchange for my honest review. #womanoflight

I liked the characters and plot and the interweaving of the different generations’ stories. It drops you into the middle of their life and gives you a snapshot of time and how they all deal with what is handed to them and how that changes the next generation.