Thank you to NetGalley and University of Minnesota press for the ARC!

This is slightly rounded down as it just wasn't a 4-star read for me.

The prose is wonderful. Felt appropriate to the early 20th century, with no jarring anachronisms as far as I could tell. I felt like I was there, especially towards the end of the book when plot picked up somewhat.

The book overall felt like a slice of life, but I'm not sure that was the intent. There were too many threads that were picked up and then abandoned. Some appear to have been intended as red herring, but others felt unnecessary. What was the point of Odd, for example? Willa learns a lot from Ruth, apparently, but that's completely off page. The other wife is barely there, but surely she isn't in "real" life, as there are only four families there. They must interact every day, but we meet her once (twice?). She's so absent, I can't recall her name.

This is very much Theodulf's book. I don't know if he gets the most time on page technically, but he is the only one we get to fully understand by the end. He's not a nice person exactly, but he's consistent. Willa is a bit of a sketch, unfortunately.

Set on the wild shores of Lake Superior in 1910, *A Lesser Light* is a beautifully written tale of isolation, resilience, and quiet rebellion. Willa, a young woman thrust into an arranged marriage after her father’s death, finds herself trapped in a cold lighthouse with a distant, brooding husband. But as Halley’s Comet approaches and the northern skies darken, a flicker of hope arrives in the form of a clairvoyant girl and her perceptive uncle. The novel blends cosmic wonder with emotional depth, weaving themes of science, superstition, and self-discovery. Haunting and lyrical, this story is as atmospheric as the lake itself, with a slow burn that rewards patient readers.

I went into this book excited for the setting. I love lighthouses. I love the Great Lakes. I fell into the book rather quickly.

However, my biggest gripe may sound minor, but it pulled me out of the story many times and frustrated me.

The author kept switching POV with no markers. Using "he" instead of the name. And really, throughout, the use of pronouns instead of names made for confusing reading. Likewise time marker transitions weren't great- flashbacks, present time, etc. Each new section, I had to reorient myself in a way that I did not care for.
In general, would hope for better transitions in future books from this author.

Some really great language but a fair amount of extraneous details. Spending too much time in places where it didn't (to me) seem to matter- the details of rowing - showing every step. This sometimes got boring after a while and slowed the story down.

That said, this isn't a "plot" book. It's a "character" book and the author is an absolute wonder with characters. Maybe some of the best I've ever read. They are all complex, multi-faceted, fallible, and interesting. I read on for the characters and will read more from this author for the characters as well.

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I have no reservations about judging a book by its first page. If the opening lines don’t reel me in, it usually goes right into my DNF (did not finish) list—unless I am fatally bored. A Lesser Light by Peter Geye had me hooked immediately. While the beginning wasn’t quite poetry, it was something similar, and it was just the right mix of intriguing and tongue-in-cheek to get me brimming with questions.

The author has a unique way of balancing tone: many sentences simultaneously raise questions and make serious implications yet remain lackadaisical. A good example of this is, “For a moment, she fancied stepping into the killing waters.” This combination encourages the reader to be curious while helping the narrative feel more grounded and mundane. This wry, almost whimsical tone is threaded throughout a narrative of religious zealotry and interpersonal drama.

If you’re a fan of minimalist writing—turn away. While A Lesser Light is far from overbearingly purple, Geye is exceedingly fond of metaphor and detailed descriptions. I thoroughly enjoyed his fresh turn of phrases, although my Google search history might raise a few eyebrows. Geye casually flings around words like “strychnine” and “basso profundo” right from the rip. I know a lot of words, but Geye uses a lot of niche vocabulary with a focus on obscure musical terminology, and I enjoyed learning more.

I rarely see a well-written, clever, and calculating woman protagonist. Luckily, Willa Sauer is all those things and more; “she made a silent vow; her covenant would be with the wilds—the wolves and water and celestial bodies. She would remain as agnostic as nature. And as cunning.” Willa is unerringly herself in a world that wants her to abide by its rules. When made to confess her sins, she “felt gleeful and hurried through a litany of false sins […] What else was forbidden?”

Willa’s fraught relationship with her husband is the main source of tension in the novel. I cheered aloud when she struck him back after he hit her. Theodulf, her husband, is a complex character that I took pleasure in loathing. This sums him up nicely: “His remorse, though, took a moment to classify. […] he visited the chamber of his faith, then his marriage, then his family name. He found no guilt in any of them. […] It was only in dishonoring himself that he felt any culpability.” Where Willa is defiant and curious, he is willfully ignorant and pridefully obedient. Where Willa’s instinct is to help a distressed child, Theodulf is blinded by the inconvenience of having his routine disrupted. This dichotomy is the perfect source of conflict—every lull is followed by a clash in their inherent characteristics that pushes the story further and further into tension and intrigue.

I enjoyed this book immensely. I would love to have a physical copy to mark up because a reread would reveal things I missed the first go around. If you like prose and character-driven stories, you’ll enjoy A Lesser Light.

Favorite Lines:
“They were so close she could reach out and hold their music.”
“Wisps of fog still licked the lantern room, as if it were exhaling, its breath plenty, for the fog no sooner ended than the clouds did commence. She scanned the rest of the sky to discern the time, but there was none.”
“This bedlamite. This quibbling gasbag. This dullard.”
“The cove was glass-like, the sky pink and guileful, the woods and shore blanketed by downy snow.”
“Did he crumple like bed linen falling from a drying line?”
“The birds have killed my song.”
“Whether that shattered light was a song or a soul, she had only a hunch.”

A fictional account of a mis-matched couple in the early 20th century. Theodulf Sauer is from a prominent family in Duluth and the now in charge of the Gininwabiko Lighthouse and the other watchers, on the shore of Lake Superior. She is much younger, Willa Brandt Sauer, ripped out of Radcliffe College where she studied astronomy, due to the death of her father.

Now Willa and her mother are stranded without funds or ability to get by, so a quick marriage of convenience to Theodulf was arranged.
They don’t get along from day one, it is a marriage of convenience and they hardly seem to even try to be friendly with each other. They had met because of her piano playing. Theodulf was taken by her rendition of Moonlight Sonata. It reminds him of the one time he was truly happy, in Paris when he met and had a brief affair with Paul. Being of a strict religious family this type of behavior is not tolerated, thus the need for a wife.

This is a long book and things move slowly. There aren’t many characters, but the solitary neighbor girl, Silje is quite a character herself, and my favorite in the book. I was intrigued by the premise of lighthouse and the watchers, and it was satisfied as the lighthouse has a prominent place in the book.

A Lesser Light
By Peter Geye

This is a beautifully written book that touches on many things but nothing direct. It takes place along Lake Superior near Duluth, Minnesota at the turn of the 20th century.

It is the story of the Gininwabiko Lighthouse, its keeper, and those who live around it. The lighthouse master is one Theodulf Sauer. He is the son and heir of a pillar of the Duluth community, a wealthy attorney and a self-made man. Though a professed Roman Catholic, Mr. Sauer Sr. is not a nice – or good – man.

Theodulf, his son, is socially awkward, a disappointment to his father. After embarrassing his father and being disbarred, Theodulf is sent to Paris to sow his wild oats and get himself straight. Unfortunately, far from straightening up, Theodulf finds himself in a relationship with another man!

Willa, is the much loved daughter of her meteorologist father and her drunkard mother who cuckolds her husband while belittling him. Willa has just returned from Radcliffe College upon receiving word that her father has ended his life. Her college is over and she and her mother are facing poverty.

Theodulf and Wiila enter into a marriage of expedience – he for his job prospects, she for financial security. As they start life together at the lighthouse, they always seem to be out of step and both unhappy, not knowing how to reach out to each other.

There are other characters here as well who exemplify both the good and bad in human beings. The weather – both the beautiful days and the horrendous storms – seems to reflect the multiple facets of the characters.

I would call this a character study – including the weather as a character. While not filled with plot twists, the book will leave you with much to ponder.

BOOK REPORT
Received a complimentary copy of A Lesser Light, by Peter Geye, from the University of Minnesota Press/NetGalley, for which I am appreciative, in exchange for a fair and honest review. Scroll past the BOOK REPORT section for a cut-and-paste of the DESCRIPTION of it from them if you want to read my thoughts on the book in the context of that summary.

I’m a sucker for a lighthouse story, even though—as my husband and I discussed last night—they all seem to be depressing and weird/unsettling/etc.

Unfortunately, this was not one of the better ones I’ve read and/or watched. I even whinged on a bit about it in a Book Report about a novella I read whilst in the middle of reading A Lesser Light.

Version Short: First quarter boring as all get-out. Pass out stone cold sober boring. Almost didn’t pick it back up after the novella. Then two quarters of interesting, but so, just……strange. And somewhat difficult to read because of the wording choices—lots of vocabulary from the early 1900s. Then the final quarter was kind of a maze to get through, with an unsatisfyingly cliched (to me) ending.

But, hey, at least it led to an interesting dinner table discussion about Lighthouse Movies (& Akin) That We Have Loved. So without further ado….

- The Lighthouse, 2019. “Two lighthouse keepers try to maintain their sanity while living on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.” Willem Dafoe and a noise that would drive a sane person crazy, much less the rest of us. But particularly me, because the foghorn sounded so much like the alarm clock I got in high school. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7984734/

- The Vanishing, 2018. “Three lighthouse keepers on the remote Flannan Isles obtain a mysterious trunk, leading to their mysterious disappearance.” Could things get any weirder? Well, probably. But, still. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4131496/

- The Fog, 2005, and The Fog, 1980. “Local legend tells of a ship lured on to the rocks of Antonio Bay being enveloped by a supernatural cloud as it sank; the myth says that when this mysterious fog returns, the victims will rise up from the depths seeking vengeance.” Pick your poison. Both the original and the remake are worth seeing for different reasons. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080749/ and https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432291/

- How I Ended This Summer, 2010. “One place. One day. Two men. The place is a polar research station on an island in the Arctic Ocean, inhabited now only by Sergei and Pavel. One day when Sergei is out angling, Pavel picks up a radio message that he daren't communicate.” No lighthouse proper, but feels like there should’ve been. Russian. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588875/...

- Enys Men, 2022. “Set in 1973 on an uninhabited island off the Cornish coast, a wildlife volunteer's daily observations of a rare flower turn into a metaphysical journey that forces her as well as the viewer to question what is real and what is a nightmare.” Once again not a lighthouse proper, but the movie is certainly evocative of one. And I have never thought of lichen the same way since watching this. Repeatedly. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11698800/

We haven’t watched this one, yet, but want to: The Lighthouse, 2016. “Based on real events which saw two lighthouse keepers stranded for months at sea in a freak storm, the film tells a tale of death, madness and isolation; a desolate trip into the heart of human darkness.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3520714/

Cheerios, then!

DESCRIPTION
On the rocky shores of Lake Superior, a piercing story of selfhood and determinism develops: is the future what we’re handed or what we make of it?

It’s 1910, and Theodulf Sauer has finally achieved a position befitting his ego: master lighthouse keeper at a newly commissioned station towering above Lake Superior. When his new wife, Willa, arrives on the first spring ferry, it’s clear her life has taken the opposite turn: after being summoned home from college to Duluth when her father dies, she and her scheming mother find themselves destitute, and Willa is rushed into this ill-suited arranged marriage before she can comprehend her fate.

As the lighthouse station establishes, the new relationship teeters between tense and hostile, with little mutual understanding or tenderness. Willa takes solace in her learned fascination with the cosmos, especially (despite her husband’s suspicion of the event) in viewing the imminent Halley’s Comet. Under ominous night skies, Theodulf stands sentry over the lake, clinging to long-ago and faraway memories of happiness that fill him with longing and shame.

Into this impasse, a clairvoyant girl and her resolute uncle emerge from across the cove. They see through the Sauers’ thin façade and, by turns and in different ways, convey promise, sympathy, and insight that counter Willa’s despair. Armed with renewed self-determination, Willa forges a path to happiness. But before she can grasp it, tragedy comes to their remote beacon, and her future plunges toward a dark unknown.

Set against a brooding and beautiful landscape, A Lesser Light is a story about industry and calamity, science versus superstition, inner desire countered with societal expectations—and the consequences when these forces collide in the wilderness of rapid social change.

This novel provides a detailed look at life on Lake Superior in the early 20th century. Although there are flashbacks to Paris and Boston, most of the book takes place in Duluth and northeast to Two Harbors. The main characters are Theodulf (a lost and unhappy lighthouse stationmaster), his young and equally lost wife Willa, a fisherman who lives near the lighthouse, and the fisherman’s orphaned niece.

In this narrative, the lake serves as a central element, with the human characters providing insights into the influence of the lake and its varying effects on the nearby residents.

If you love Lake Superior and the North Shore, you may well find this book a great read.

This was a sad and suspensful story of a woman, Willa, who has been damaged by a weak father and a mean, selfish mother. Then she gets married off, because there is no money and she didn’t get to finish her education to learn a trade or career. The worst part is that she is married off to a mentally sick man. He’s also mean and unloving.

Because of his career of lighthouse keeper, they are stuck together in an inhospitable place where she doesn’t want to live.

Does any of this sound like it would be worth reading? I have to say that I really enjoyed this story.
Except for the ending. I really wish the author could have found a bit better ending or that he would explain why he chose the way he ended it.
It was still very much worth reading.
The writing is good and the story was developed well. I liked the other characters who added to the story, but I especially liked Willa. She is strongwilled and loves science, which does not sit well with her husband.

Reading this unusual novel I felt as if one of the nineteen century writers could have been resurrected.. Hardy, came to mind immediately. The novel’s backdrop was unusual . The Great Lakes in the 1900’s was a unique backdrop for the story. I loved the descriptions of the flora and fauna of this remote area of the lake and its lighthouse… the central figure in this book. All the themes are here.. repression, violence, homosexuality, rape, and prejudice. The lighthouse keeper is doomed from the first chapter. The characters are wonderfully depicted and the author has captured all the nuances of this isolated primitive landscape. The ending disappointed me. I felt it was too predictable and tacked on as a way to quickly end the narrative.

I was not able to download this from Net Galley and so don't have a review for you. I do now have a ARC and will provide a review if we decide to include it in our magazine.

It is only recently that I have learned that I DO like historical fiction. I was granted early access to this book and it will long live in my mind. In the time frame of this novel, the early 1900's, women are not autonomous people. Marriage is not for love.

In the year 1910, Theodulf, a disgraced lawyer from a prominent MN family, takes on the position of master lighthouse keeper on the craggy shores of Lake Superior. Willa, his young new wife, arrives at their remote lighthouse location, after her life takes a terrible turn upon the death of her father when she and her mother find themselves destitute. As a result, Willa is rushed into an arranged, loveless, marriage. She is an academic, very bright, and was attending college when her father died. She is ill suited to marriage at her age, but understands she must. She does not attend to her housewife duties willingly. She rebels at societal norms, complying minimally.

This book is beautiful. I loved Willa and her spiritedness. I felt for her and as I read, also for her husband, for different reasons. It is so well written and I am moved.

I found A Lesser Light to be an intriguing story. Peter Geye does an excellent job of weaving a complex story involving multiple characters over several decades into a coherent and compelling story. I loved watching Willa develop and find her voice. She is unwilling to accept her fate to just be married off and despite all odds manages to find her voice and happiness. I also found the historical setting of the lighthouse community of Lake Superior to fit the story well.

5 stars from me for this one
Stories of Lake Superior and lighthouses are my favorite kind of read. That's why I enjoyed this novel so much.
This was a definite can't put down book. I was fascinated from beginning to end.
By the middle of this book I was so far gone that I could actually hear the sound of the waves and see myself standing on her shores.
Peter Geye has created a story with wonderful characters with a good plot that's well thought out.
In my opinion, life is an interesting journey.
Life is what we make of it no matter our station in this world. We are all human when it comes right down to it. It's sad that some fail to see that.
I like Willa. She's certainly an interesting character and one of my favorites. She's steady, dependable and sometimes headstrong. I loved her life's journey.
I highly recommend this beautifully written novel.
My thanks for a copy of this book. I was NOT required to write a positive review. All opinions expressed are mine.

This is a beautifully written story about the life of a lighthouse keeper and his wife. The emotive writing really brings this story to life, the harsh landscape surrounding the characters and their swells of emotion really burst right off the page. While reading, you really do feel transported to this isolated setting. This was a really interesting read but I did find it hard to connect fully with the characters so the book didn't end up leaving a huge impression on me but is still a beautiful read.

Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy.

This is an interesting read. The life of a lighthouse master and his wife. Both come together from different backgrounds. He from a wealthy affluent family. She from middle class family whose father was a meteorologist. Mismatched in their union we explore both of their lives that brought them together and then their journey of their marriage. Minnesota harsh conditions are brought to light throughout the book. I was given an advanced reader copy of this book by NetGalley and I am freely sharing my review

Peter Geye talks about a light House such a Split Rock which is north of Two Harbors totally not maned by the Coast Guard anymore but by other people who man it today. I love to hear about all the stories of ships that have been dealt with by the huge waves during the November storms. I worked on the Great Lakes over the summers for the Columbia Line. My friend worked on the S.S. Edmund Fitzgearld during the summer of 1975. She sank that year in November. He was really unhappy about it. He locked out. This story is about Keeper Sauer and his wife, Willa. I'll let Peter tell his story but it is a good one which I recommend.

I love Peter Geye's writing and have read all his books to date. This one was a little different and a bit longer. I loved it.

I really enjoyed how good everything was in this novel, it had that historical element perfectly and enjoyed going on this journey with the characters. The characters had that element that I was looking for and enjoyed getting to know them in this. Peter Geye wrote a fantastic novel and was glad I got to read this.