Description

‘Sometimes you just step into a book and let it wash over you, like you’re swimming under a big, sparkling night sky’ Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere

‘A formidable, necessary voice in fiction’ Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Malibu Rising

‘A feat of old-school storytelling’ The Observer

There is one every generation, a seer who keeps the stories.

Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion.

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 love-filled with an unforgettable cast of characters, all of whom are just as special, memorable, and complicated as our beloved heroine, Luz.

‘Captivating’ Mieko Kawakami, author of Breasts and Eggs

‘[A] bewitching debut novel’ BBC’s History magazine

Publisher Review

Sometimes you just step into a book and let it wash over you, like you're swimming under a big, sparkling night sky * Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You * 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 . . . A formidable, necessary voice in fiction * Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Malibu Rising * With a single phrase, line of dialogue, 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. . . . Captivating * Mieko Kawakami, author of Breasts and Eggs * 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 * Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here * 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 * Gary Shteyngart, author of Lake Success * 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 * Craig Johnson, author of the Longmire series * A cinematic, epic story. Kali Fajardo-Anstine brings her keen understanding of desire, vulnerability, and destiny to this gorgeous reclaiming of lost history * Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk * Fajardo-Anstine's storytelling is absolutely engrossing * Shondaland * A transporting story of the importance of family history told in a luminescent style * Good Housekeeping * A lush, immersive historical novel * Kirkus Reviews * An entrancing book about the stories we carry, the ones we need to keep telling. Fajardo-Anstine has given us another stunning cast of characters to root for * Lithub * A novel with vast reach * Electric Literature * An unparalleled generational saga . . . one of the most potent voices in contemporary Latino and Native American literature * BeLatina *