NATIONAL BESTSELLER
-NOW IN PAPERBACK-
WINNER of Reading The West Award in Fiction
WINNER of Women Writing the West Willa Award in Historical Fiction
Longlisted for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Longlisted for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize For Fiction
Longlisted for the 2023 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
“A feat of old-school storytelling…” The Guardian
“An absolutely glorious novel.”—Emma Straub
A Good Morning America BuzzPick
A Phenomenal Book Club Pick
A Roxane Gay Book Club Pick
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
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 1930’s Denver on her own, 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.
Praise for Woman of Light:
“Woman of Light’s scope called Willa Cather to mind—but Fajardo-Anstine shines a spotlight on characters whose stories often fall into the shadows. When I turned the last page, I was still in that gray January, but somehow the world felt a little bigger, and a little more hopeful.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You
“Fajardo-Anstine’s storytelling is absolutely engrossing.”—Shondaland
“A transporting story of the importance of family history told in a luminescent style.”—Good Housekeeping“This indelible novel 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
“This is 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, bestselling 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
“An unparalleled generational saga . . . one of the most potent voices in contemporary Latino and Native American literature.”—BeLatina
“A classic legendary Latinx story and a punch that says [Fajardo-Anstine] can square up with any contemporary writer. Quite literally . . . she can do it all.”—Lupita Reads“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.” — Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Malibu Rising
“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.” — Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk and The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing
“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, and how the world comes into contact with us, and how we come into contact with the world. The combination of a composed style and a passionate world view underlying all of her work is truly wonderful. It’s captivating. Fajardo-Anstine is a special author to me.” — Mieko Kawakami, author of Heaven and Breasts and Eggs