This real history is what makes the cast of characters in the book impossible to forget. Over five generations, Woman of Light follows one family’s journey of love, displacement, survival, and community. Woman of Light is pulled from the stories Fajardo-Anstine-who also published a short story collection in 2019, Sabrina and Corina -heard growing up of her family coming north from Southern Colorado to Denver during the 1920s and 1930s. Most of the characters in Fajardo-Anstine’s second book are based on her family members and ancestors. He’s also fiercely loving and protective of his Luz-meaning light-who is based on Fajardo-Anstine’s Auntie Lucy, Jakie’s sister in real life. Diego makes a living performing tricks at festivals with his pet snakes, “two large, aggressive rattlers” named Reina and Corporal. Jakie served as inspiration for Diego, one of the characters in Fajardo-Anstine’s new book, Woman of Light, which released today. So it was intriguing when Fajardo-Anstine discovered she had a snake charmer in her family, her great-uncle Jakie. “I grew up in a house where people were terrified of snakes,” she adds. And it wasn’t just her sister who harbored an intense, coiling fear of the reptiles. “If we were watching TV and a snake came on, she would run out of the room,” Fajardo-Anstine tells Sweet July. (June)Ĭorrection: An earlier version of this review misstated the location of a fictional town and misidentified a character’s nationality.Growing up, Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s sister Avalon had a severe phobia of snakes. Agent: Julia Masnik, Agency: Watkins/Loomis Agency. Despite the uneven effort, it’s clear this author has talent to spare. Unfortunately, Fajardo-Anstine’s Denver lacks the same historical precision she gives to the Lost Territory portions, and is limited to a few plugged-in period details. Luz uses her family connections to become a secretary in a law office where she finds herself in a love triangle with her attorney boss and a young mariachi musician. Luz entrances with visions dredged from reading tea leaves, but her gift of seeing often portends ominous circumstances such as racist violence from the KKK. The author describes it wonderfully: “a pistol crack, a long rifle’s pinging bullet, the exasperated neigh of a horse.” The narrative centers for the most part on seer Luz “Little Light” Lopez, who leads a hardscrabble life in 1930s Denver with her aunt Maria Josie and her brother, Diego, a snake charmer and womanizer. Pidre Lopez, the family’s anchor and a Puebloan Indigenous person, settles in Animas, Co., where he runs a Wild West show. Depictions of the Lost Territory are vivid and well-informed.
Fajardo-Anstine’s impressive if underdeveloped debut novel (after the collection Sabrina & Corina) recounts the harrowing multigenerational adventures of a family originating in the “Lost Territory” of late 19th-century New Mexico and arriving in Denver by the 1930s.
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