The Lighthouse Road: A Novel

✍ Scribed by Peter Geye

• Publisher: Unbridled Books
• Year: 2012;2013
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 157 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 1609531000

✦ Synopsis

The story moves back and forth in time from the arrival of Thea from her isolated village in arctic Norway in search of a new life in the near wilderness of a small town and logging camp on the shore of Lake Superior to the travails of her orphaned son, Odd, some twenty years later. When Thea’s aunt and uncle do not meet her boat as planned, she’s initially left abandoned with no money or prospects and without speaking the language. Befriended by a local businessman and apothecary with secrets of his own, she obtains work as a cook in the nearby logging camp. While living through one of the coldest and threatening winters in memory, she is raped by an itinerant peddler and petty criminal. She delivers the baby in a blinding snowstorm the next fall, attended by her original benefactor and his “daughter” who is also the town’s surgeon and midwife, but she soon dies of childbirth complications. The apothecary, Grimm, takes the infant into his household and the boy is raised more or less by the entire town, eventually growing up under Grimm’s influence to be a fisherman, smuggler for Grimm’s whiskey trade, and a boat builder. Still, he struggles to find himself and to reconcile the loss of his mother, and he becomes increasingly troubled by Grimm’s criminal enterprises and dirty secrets until an unlikely love affair puts everything on a collision course.

**

From Booklist

Starred Review Writing with the same austere beauty as the wilderness surrounding the frontier town of Gunflint, Minnesota, Geye powerfully portrays a family’s struggles. A newly arrived Norwegian immigrant discovers her family has fallen apart, forcing her to find her own way. Her son Odd’s achingly earnest love for the wrong woman means he faces agonizingly difficult choices for his own family. Their stories, spanning the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, are intertwined, unfolding not in chronological order but rather shuttling back and forth between centuries. In his second novel, Geye brings the wilderness of northern Minnesota—in a lumberjack camp and a small town and aboard a skiff riding the waves of Lake Superior—to crackling, thundering life. Handled less skillfully, Geye’s emphasis on one primary trait in his characters—their intense longing for somewhere to belong and, at the same time, somewhere to be free—might come off as one-dimensional, but here the story and its people achieve remarkable emotional resonance. The echoes of the characters’ heartbreak through the generations are as haunting as the howling of the wolves on the wind. --Bridget Thoreson

Review

"Peter Geye writes with the mesmerizing power of the snowstorms that so often come howling off Lake Superior. I am in awe of how he swirls through so many years and juggles so many characters, all of them unforgettable and weighed down by secrets and regrets and desires that burn through the hoarfrost of Geye's bristling sentences." — Benjamin Percy

Geye (Safe from the Sea) returns to his familiar setting, the unforgiving landscape of northern Minnesota, and brings the plight of Norwegian immigrants vividly to life. On a cold November in 1896, a son is born to Thea Eide, a cook in a primitive logging camp. She succumbs to fever, and the boy, named Odd, is left in the care of his guardian, Hosea Grimm. Grimm delivers babies, sets broken bones, and runs an apothecary in the town of Gunflint. As a young man, Odd despairs of ever getting away from Hosea and his other enterprises, bootlegging and prostitution, but he develops a plan: build and outfit his boat so he can escape with Grimm’s daughter, Rebekah. When Rebekah announces she’s expecting their baby, Odd accelerates their plans to leave for Duluth just as winter is setting in. He is able to provide for his new family as a boat builder, but there are no happy endings here, only resilience and resolve to carry on. Odd is determined that his son will not experience a loss as he did. VERDICT With spare realism, Geye puts a fresh spin on a familiar tale, rendering a powerful portrayal of family bonds in an era long past. Highly recommended.— Library Journal

“In his second novel, Geye brings the wilderness of northern Minnesota—in a lumberjack camp and a small town and aboard a skiff riding the waves of Lake Superior—to crackling, thundering life. Handled less skillfully, Geye's emphasis on one primary trait in his characters—their intense longing for somewhere to belong and, at the same time, somewhere to be free—might come off as one-dimensional, but here the story and its people achieve remarkable emotional resonance. The echoes of the characters' heartbreak through the generations are as haunting as the howling of the wolves on the wind.”— Booklist, starred review

✦ Subjects

A Novel