A Lesser Light: A Novel

by Peter Geye

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781517916374
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	04/15/2025
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Peter Geye is the award-winning author of Safe from the Sea, The Lighthouse Road, Wintering, Northernmost, and The Ski Jumpers (Minnesota, 2022). He lives in Minneapolis with his family.

Table of Contents

Contents

The Gininwabiko Light

Mare Crisium

“Quasi una fantasia”

Seiches

Stellar Aberration

A Long Shadow Behind

Seventh Sunday

The Serpent’s Tail

The Storm

Anima

Fog

Inheritance

Dead Stars

Magnetic

Mariage Blanc

Where Does the Light Go?

The Thousandth Watch

At Loggerheads

Ripeness

Queen of the Highway

Offing

The Fawn

Undertow

Spindrift

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/17/2025

Geye (The Ski Jumper) sets this masterful tale about the limits of faith and fidelity on the rugged shore of Lake Superior. After Radcliffe student Willa Brandt’s father dies by suicide in 1910, her mother insists she return home to Duluth, Minn., and marry someone with the means to save them from destitution. Willa reluctantly weds Theodulf Sauer, the rigid Catholic son of a leading Duluth family. The couple move to the lake shore, where Theodulf has just been made chief keeper of a new lighthouse. Theodulf, who harbors shame over a sexual encounter a decade earlier, finds solace in his nighttime routine at the lighthouse and gazes at the lake’s abyss while struggling to pray. Willa, who studied astronomy and is more interested in Halley’s Comet than cooking, defies Theodulf’s demands for wifely obedience and never consummates the marriage. Instead, she bonds with their fisherman neighbor, Mats Braaten, and finds glimmers of a more authentic and satisfying life when they become lovers. Geye portrays the stark landscape in luminous prose, and he eschews a simple black-and-white story of marital conflict for something much more surprising and complex. This bittersweet narrative astounds. Agent: Jesseca Salky, Salky Literary Management. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Reading this book felt like watching some rare celestial event: sky-big, beautiful and strangely tender, and full of a kind of magic at the edge of things that’s impossible to describe and changes you forever to witness."—Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You​

 

"Peter Geye’s A Lesser Light has elemental forces within it, powered by weather, Lake Superior, and the conflicts of religion and the heart in the early parts of the twentieth century. This book has qualities that may remind some readers of the novels of Thomas Hardy: a strong woman who is far from the life of the crowd, a detailed attention to work, and a fascinating cast of major and minor characters. This novel is a great feat of literary imagination."—Charles Baxter, author of Blood Test

 

"In this tempest of a novel, Peter Geye has bound together husband and wife on the bleak cliffside of an ill-suited marriage, where wolves howl, shipwrecks haunt, lovers meet in secret, and hope arcs in stardust. I will never forget this achingly beautiful story with its prose that sings through the soul."—Carol Dunbar, author of The Net Beneath Us

 

"Once again, Peter Geye has gifted us with his literary wizardry. In A Lesser Light, he led me on a time-travel journey that transported me back in time to the landscape of northern Minnesota in 1910 and immersed me in the lives of a deeply troubled couple whose antics kept me gasping at the turn of every page."—Carolyn Holbrook, author of Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify

 

"Geye portrays the stark landscape in luminous prose, and he eschews a simple black-and-white story of marital conflict for something much more surprising and complex. This bittersweet narrative astounds."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

 

"Geye remains fascinated by Minnesota’s rugged northern wilderness and the way in which harsh environments reveal a person’s innermost qualities. Here the dynamic between husband and wife presents its own challenging terrain, stony and sea-battered yet ultimately beautiful."—Booklist

 

"A meticulously told story of flawed people seeking connection."—Kirkus Reviews

 

"If you like prose and character-driven stories, you’ll enjoy A Lesser Light. "—MoonLit Getaway

 

"Geye’s writing is lush, from evoking the sounds, smells and moods of Lake Superior to the mechanics of keeping the lighthouse light functioning to Willa’s amusement at the pomposity of her husband’s uniformed visiting bosses."—Pioneer Press

 

"Geye presents the reader with the wonder of his characters and the place and time they inhabit."—Necessary Fiction

 

"Geye weaves in descriptions of nature beautifully, aptly creating a sense of place amidst the well-rounded characters."—MinnPost

 

"Geye's narrative is rich in the details of the various lifestyles portrayed. He captures the language of the educated class and the less educated labourers, the differences in gender cadences, and the accurate voice of the teenage girl."—The Chronicle Journal

 

"In A Lesser Light, Peter Geye paints an unforgettable picture of Minnesota, one in which history leaps to life. This wonderful book presents a completely immersive and absorbing world, masterfully rendered. With tenderness, humor, and deep insight, Geye traces the paths of a community living around and in service to a lighthouse, among them a stern and religious keeper; his prickly, lonely new wife; a local man unexpectedly a guardian to his orphaned niece; and the niece herself, each of them keeping secrets and struggling to face the future. Their choices make for a surprising literary page-turner that—like all good historical fiction—teaches us how to live in the present."—V.V. Ganeshananthan, author of Brotherless Night

From the Publisher

2025-03-22
A loveless marriage runs aground at a Lake Superior lighthouse.

From the beginning of Geye’s novel, it’s clear that the marriage of Willa and Theodulf Sauer is deeply flawed. The year is 1910, and Theodulf has recently taken a position as the keeper of a new lighthouse overlooking Lake Superior. He takes his job very seriously, at one point telling Willa, “My responsibilities are first to God, then to the Lighthouse Service, then to you.” Willa, a scientifically minded woman with a penchant for the piano, is frustrated by her husband’s beliefs and his controlling tendencies. Late in the book, she reflects on how they came to marry, pondering that “it was less a courtship than a mugging.” When she meets a girl named Silje and her uncle, Mats, Willa finds people with whom she can be more herself; eventually, she and Mats begin an affair. In a series of flashbacks to 1900 and 1905, Geye recounts an earlier encounter between Theodulf and Willa, as well as a trip to Paris when Theodulf met a man for whom he continues to pine years after they parted. The death of Theodulf’s father provides another shift in this book’s interpersonal dynamics: “How was it that not a single emotion coursed through him save a slight peevishness at needing to leave his post?” Both halves of the unhappy couple demonstrate different sides in conversations with their respective mothers, and Geye illustrates his characters’ contradictory aspects well. There’s also an impressive attention to detail and some knowing humor, as when one character says, “Fathers and sons, the Russians write novels about them.” This isn’t an epic Russian novel, but it might be a Minnesotan take on one.

A meticulously told story of flawed people seeking connection.

Kirkus Reviews