Review by Booklist Review
On a forlorn Lake Superior lighthouse island in 1910, a husband and wife battle their unforgiving surroundings, the ghosts of their pasts, and each other. Master lighthouse keeper Theodulf is rigid, taciturn, and mechanically inclined, bearing a near-religious duty to "the mechanism" of the lighthouse and the engineers that invented it. Frigid Lake Superior surrounds him; when he thinks of it (rarely), he thinks it's both kind and mean. His new wife, Willa, is a creature of "wolves and water and celestial bodies," sensitive to the shifting winds and disturbances of the atmosphere. At the piano, she abandons herself to music like a gull "thrashing as though caught in the gale." She has lost her father and thinks often of Halley's comet, somewhere in the skies above. Having completed his three-part trilogy about the Norwegian Eide family, (The Lighthouse Road, 2013; Wintering, 2016; and Northernmost, 2021), 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.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
