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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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WOMAN OF LIGHT

Kali Fajardo-Anstine

A dazzling epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West, from the author of the National Book Award Finalist Sabrina & Corina
In WOMAN IN LIGHT, Kali merges two multi-generational storylines, creating a novel of family love, secrets, and survival. With her immense capacity to render characters and paint vivid life, WOMAN OF LIGHT is full of the weight, richness, and complexities of mixed race families and the ground on which they've always lived, set against the Sange de Cristo mountains in Colorado.

Family history is the basis of this story the magic comes in the author's gorgeous writing and how she spins it, in her beautiful, well-researched tale. The novel takes place between 1890 and 1935, and similar to her other works, Fajardo-Anstine uses family archives, newspapers, books, first-person accounts, archives, museum visits, and more to craft an accurate accounting of history.

1890: When Desiderya Lopez, The Sleepy Prophet, finds an abandoned infant on the banks of a gully, she recognizes something in his spirit and brings him home. Pidre will go on to become a famous showman in the Anglo West whose main act, Simodecea, is Pidres fearless, sharpshooting wife, who wrangles bears as part of his show.

1935: Luz "Little Light" Lopez and her brother Diego work the carnival circuit in downtown Denver. Luz, is a tea leaf reader, and Diego is a snake charmer. One day, a pale-faced woman in white fur asks Luz for a reading, calling her by a name that only her brother knows. Later that night at a party downtown, Luz sees Diego dancing with this pale-faced woman, which results in a brawl with the local white supremacist group. Diego leaves town for cover and Luz is left trying to get justice for her brother and family.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine is from Denver, Colorado. Her fiction has appeared in The American Scholar, Boston Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Idaho Review, Southwestern American Literature, and elsewhere. Kali has received fellowships from MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and Hub City Press. She received her MFA from the University of Wyoming and has lived across the country, from Durango, Colorado, to Key West, Florida. Fajardo-Anstine has been interviewed by Pen America, Bomb Magazine, Bustle, Lit Hub, and Electric Literature. Her virtual events and writing workshops have sold out almost immediately.
Available products
Book

Published 2022-06-07 by One World

Book

Published 2022-06-07 by One World

Comments

"Written in Kali Fajardo-Anstine's singular voice, the wildly entertaining and complex lives of the Lopez family fill the pages of this multigenerational western saga. Woman of Light is a transfixing novel about survival, family secrets, and lovefilled with an unforgettable cast of characters, all of whom are just as special, memorable, and complicated as our beloved heroine, Luz."

"Sometimes you just step into a book and let it wash over you, like you're swimming under a big, sparkling night sky."

".An entrancing book about the stories we carry, the ones we need to keep telling. What family secrets lay in her bloodline? What great love? National Book Award finalist Kali Fajardo-Anstine has given us another stunning cast of characters to root for."

"This is a cinematic, epic story. Kali Fajardo-Anstine brings her keen understanding of desire, vulnerability, and destiny to this gorgeous reclaiming of lost history."

"This novel is indelible, and shines its big light on the Lopez family so brightly that I could draw a map of their breath. An absolutely glorious novel."

"Woman of Light is an intimate and intensely moving story of a Latinx and Indigenous family in the American West. Kali Fajardo-Anstine's lyrical, unpretentious prose renders the generations of women of this story in all of their complexity, offering a nuanced perspective on how the past can inform the future. Once again, Fajardo-Anstine proves she is a formidable, necessary voice in fiction."

Sensory-rich details. A lush, immersive historical novel.

" A novel with vast reach.from the acclaimed Fajardo-Anstine."

"Woman of Light is a Western novelit cares deeply about the landscape. The terrain of the Lost Territory teems with life, even as settling pioneers call it empty. The cold mountains and expansive plains of Colorado serve as stand-ins for the harsh realities Luz endures. No land can be truly conquered. No people can be truly conquered either. Not as long as their stories, and their memories, endure."

"With a single phrase, a single line of dialogue, a single description, Fajardo-Anstine has the power to accurately express the joy and sadness in a person's life, their history, how the world comes into contact with us, and how we come into contact with the world. The combination of composed style and passionate world-view underlying all of her work is truly wonderful. It's captivating. Fajardo-Anstine is a special author to me."

A GREATLY ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022Lit Hub, BookRiot, Electric Literature, Latinx in Publishing, Goodreads Read more...

"Pure, simple, and luminescent. There are no other words to describe Kali Fajardo-Anstine's Woman of Light, a brilliant conflagration of a story that opens the eyes and inflames the heart."

Author's Video on her novel Read more...

A rare and wondrous kind of novel that assembles the universe from mere words, whose unforgettable characters haunt like long shadows in the southwestern light.