An elaborate and breathtaking historical novel, Peter Geye’s A Lesser Light unfolds over eight months in and around the Gininwabiko Lighthouse, located on the shore of Lake Superior, in 1910. Here Willa eagerly waits to catch a glimpse of Halley’s Comet while her husband, Theodulf, fears its passing will rain down poison on the earth. Exploring a clash between science and religion, this hefty novel, which runs to more than five hundred pages, examines a marriage of convenience, showing the harm done by restrictive societal norms set by men and the intimate damage that results from suppressing one’s true self. 

Willa arrives, destitute, at the lighthouse after her beloved father, a meteorologist and atheist who has afforded his daughter unusual freedoms, commits suicide. Forced to abandon her college study of astronomy, she is pushed into the marriage in order to secure her and her mother’s survival. Theodulf, for his part, has exiled himself to the meticulous and grueling duties of a lighthouse keeper in order to banish from memory his one night of happy pleasure with another man, turning himself into a sternly and joylessly religious person.

When Willa arrives on the ferry to join Theodulf at the lighthouse, he bars her entry to their house until she confesses her sins to the priest. She resists, but Theodulf insists, even though he cannot even bring himself to make his own confession. In an act of defiance, Willa lies to the priest: “She felt gleeful and hurried through a litany of false sins. Idolatry, envy and covetousness, blaspheming, sloth. What else was forbidden?” 

Under Theodulf’s watchful eye, Willa’s future suddenly becomes one of domestic service and allegiance to a religion she does not believe in. Yet Willa fights to hold on to her former self. She is unable wholly to submit to her new husband, and she does not care about keeping up appearances. Willa may submit to her fate when she has no choice, but she does so defiantly, without losing sight of herself or her desires. 

During Theodulf and Willa’s first outing into town, Theodulf anxiously witnesses a sudden rogue wave, worried that a falling comet or star has caused this disruption to the water. Though he cannot name it, the book reveals the phenomenon as a seiche, a wave oscillating back and forth in an enclosed body of water for hours or days. As the story flips from Theodulf to Willa, one imagines water sloshing back and forth between them, the pressure building as their contrasting characters emerge.

While the novel focuses on Theodulf and Willa, Geye builds a complete world on the island and surrounding towns and cities. His minor characters are rendered with care and detail even if they only appear in a few scenes, like an orphan boy named Odd: “A quarter of this face seemed to be missing. Where his eye should have been, only a sack of soft-looking flesh hung. Like a fish’s belly.” 

Among the cast of characters on the island is a fisherman who is suddenly the sole provider for his niece, Silje, whose parents have drowned. Willa befriends them both, and through these characters, magic enters the book. Silje is wise beyond her years, with a gift of clairvoyance. While living on the fringes of society where she can do as she pleases, she is nevertheless marked by a deep loneliness, and she remains vulnerable to predatory men. In one powerful scene, an older man corners Silje during the jubilee party for the lighthouse. The interaction shocks and terrifies her: “How had that man done this? Made her want to disappear? Fold herself a thousand times until she fit into her uncle’s pocket?” 

Silje has no control over the harmful situation, and she fears the man will return. Her conflict plays out in relation to a wolf, one of several appearing in the story. She fears the wolf; it often watches her from a distance. After the incident with the predatory man, she tries to trap and kill the wolf. Her anger in the face of the man’s intrusion causes her to lash out where she can. Many of the characters in this book focus their anger and fear in the wrong places—either because they refuse to change themselves or because have no power to change others. 

Throughout the novel, Theodulf tries to reassemble a watch he has taken apart. As he does, he ruminates on the passage of time while constantly checking his timepiece. His habit is an echo of the experience of reading this novel. Geye presents the reader with the wonder of his characters and the place and time they inhabit. He portrays the characters in A Lesser Light while slowly unveiling the intricacies beneath the surface, allowing some details to give a better understanding of the whole while shrouding other aspects in mystery.

+++

Peter Geye is the award-winning author of Safe from the Sea, The Lighthouse Road, Wintering, Northernmost, and The Ski Jumpers. He lives in Minneapolis with his family.

+

Emily Webber has published fiction, essays, and reviews in the Ploughshares Blog, The Writer, Five Points, Split Lip Magazine, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. Read more at emilyannwebber.com