A Lesser Light by Peter Geye

Peter Geye is the award-winning author of SAFE FROM THE SEA, THE LIGHTHOUSE ROAD, WINTERING, NORTHERNMOST, and THE SKI JUMPERS. His newest novel, A LESSER LIGHT, returns to an earlier time on the North Shore of Lake Superior and the establishment of a new lighthouse station.

It’s 1910 and Theodulf Sauer has just been appointed the master lighthouse keeper at a newly commissioned station on Lake Superior, after being disbarred and casting shame upon his family. He has finally redeemed himself with this position and with his proposal of marriage to Willa, a younger woman forced into an ill-suited marriage after her father’s death.

The two are opposites and neither pretends otherwise. Willa resents having to drop out of college at Radcliffe, where she studied astronomy, and Theodulf pines for a long-lost lover.  Theodulf has no interest in Willa, other than as a cook and a maid. Willa has very little domestic interest or capability. When the other two lighthouse assistants arrive with their wives, their friendships and tutelage, save her.  Across the cove, a fisherman, Mats, and his orphaned niece, Silje, befriend Willa as well, providing companionship and conversation into the vacuous expanse of her marriage and the inland sea.

Fans of Peter Geye will thrill to his return to the Northern Minnesota landscape, the dark and dangerous inland sea that sets the stage for this brooding tale of love gone awry.

Listen to my interview with Peter Geye on April 24 at 7pm and the 26th at 6am on Superior Reads. Peter Geye will be teaching at the North Shore Readers and Writers Festival in November. Registration opens in early May