A Lesser Light

A Novel

Peter Geye

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781452973739
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• The Gininwabiko Light: April 20, 1910
• Mare Crisium: April 21, 1910
• “Quasi una fantasia”: November 27, 1905
• Seiches: April 22, 1910
• Stellar Aberration: April 26, 1910
• A Long Shadow Behind: May 9, 1910
• Seventh Sunday: May 15, 1900
• The Serpent’s Tail: May 19, 1910
• The Storm: November 28, 1905
• Anima: November 29, 1905
• Fog: July 3, 1910
• Inheritance: July 5, 1910
• Dead Stars: May 15, 1900
• Magnetic: July 7, 1910
• Mariage Blanc: November 26, 1909
• Where Does the Light Go?: August 23, 1910
• The Thousandth Watch: August 24, 1910
• At Loggerheads: August 25, 1910
• Ripeness: September 1, 1910
• Queen of the Highway: September 2, 1910
• Offing: September 20, 1910
• The Fawn: October 23, 1910
• Undertow: November 1, 1910
• Spindrift: December 12, 1910
• Acknowledgments