A Lesser Light
A Novel
by Peter Geye
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Pub Date Apr 15 2025 | Archive Date Apr 01 2025
University of Minnesota Press | Univ Of Minnesota Press
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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, patriarchy’s corrosive power, and the consequences when these forces collide in the wilderness of rapid social change.
Advance Praise
"Reading this book felt like watching some rare celestial event: sky-big, beautiful and strangely tender, and full of a kind of magic at the edge of things that’s impossible to describe and changes you forever to witness." —Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You
"Peter Geye's A Lesser Light has elemental forces within it, powered by weather, Lake Superior, and the conflicts of religion and the heart in the early parts of the twentieth century. This book has qualities that may remind some readers of the novels of Thomas Hardy: a strong woman who is far from the life of the crowd, a detailed attention to work, and a fascinating cast of major and minor characters. This novel is a great feat of literary imagination." —Charles Baxter, author of Blood Test
"In this tempest of a novel, Peter Geye has bound together husband and wife on the bleak cliffside of an ill-suited marriage, where wolves howl, shipwrecks haunt, lovers meet in secret, and hope arcs in stardust. I will never forget this achingly beautiful story with its prose that sings through the soul." —Carol Dunbar, award-winning author of The Net Beneath Us
"Once again, Peter Geye has gifted us with his literary wizardry. In A Lesser Light, he led me on a time-travel journey that transported me back in time to the landscape of northern Minnesota in 1910 and immersed me in the lives of a deeply troubled couple whose antics kept me gasping at the turn of every page." —Carolyn Holbrook, author of Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify
"A Lesser Light is Peter Geye's masterpiece. The prose is as beautiful as the haunting landscape of Lake Superior. Readers will be enthralled when they meet the inhabitants of the lighthouse island. Open your heart, let in the light, and prepare to be awestruck by the magnificence of this novel." —Pamela Klinger-Horn, Valley Bookseller
"Peter Geye has written a literary time machine that will transport readers to a different time and place. Prepare to travel to a small and sparsely populated part of Minnesota—where summer comes late and Lake Superior rules the day. Geye's love and knowledge of the special world of Northern Minnesota shines through the pages of this novel, and I didn't want to leave the world he brought me into." —Mary O’Malley, Skylark Bookshop
"This deftly crafted tale, illuminated by the language of its time and place, reveals the long reach of history, the splendors and dangers of a mighty lake, and the moral character of the people determined to master it. A Lesser Light is deeply satisfying historical fiction with a rich emotional register and an homage to Minnesota’s magnificent freshwater sea." —Ann Woodbeck, Excelsior Bay Books
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781517916374 |
| PRICE | $27.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 542 |
Available on NetGalley
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