In the chapter “Shelter from the Storm,” a horrifying Ku Klux Klan march tears through downtown Denver. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?įajardo-Anstine: “Woman of Light” wouldn’t exist without the extensive historical research that I undertook for a decade. SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. We meet Auntie Maria Josie, the family’s queer and steadfast matriarch, and their boastful cousin Lizette. Her older brother, the elegant and fetching Diego, is about to take the festival stage with his two rattlesnakes, Reina and Corporal. LONGLISTED FOR THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTIONKali Fajardo-Anstine aimed for stories reflecting 'woven ancestry' CloseĮach week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author.LONGLISTED FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE 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. 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. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion.

She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. 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. There is one every generation, a seer who keeps the stories. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Book Riot.“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 YouĪ PHENOMENAL BOOK CLUB PICK AND AN AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK

A “dazzling, cinematic, intimate, lyrical” (Roxane Gay) 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.

Woman of light kali