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Book Title

In This Light

Subtitle
New and Selected Stories
Author 1
Melanie Rae Thon
Body
This selection of Melanie Rae Thon’s stories showcases her breathtaking ability to become each one of her characters, to move inside the bodies and minds of the dispossessed. One woman speaks for them all: “I’m your worst fear. But not the worst thing that can happen.”

In This Light shimmers with grace as a drunk young woman hits a Native American man on a desolate Montana road, a grieving slave murders the white child she nurses and loves, and two throwaway kids dance in the twinkling lights of a Christmas tree in a stranger’s house. Thon’s searing prose reveals that the radiant heat inside us all is the hope and hunger for love.

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List Price
$16.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-55597-585-2
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
288
Trim Size
Trim Size
5 1/2 x 8 1/4
Keynote
A vibrant selection of stories from the author of Sweet Hearts and First, Body

About the Author

Melanie Rae Thon
Credit: Andi Olsen
Melanie Rae Thon is the author of In This Light, as well as two collections of stories and four novels. Named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, she has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, two NEA Fellowships, and a residency from the Lannan Foundation. She teaches at the University of Utah.
 
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Praise

  • “Haunting and superb.”—The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), Grade: A
  • “[In This Light] captures Thon at her tough, unremittingly intense, unflinching best. . . . Her words can be fiercely poetic or streaked with mysticism. . . . [These are] bluntly powerful but deeply nuanced stories from a unique voice in American fiction.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
  • “Violated bodies, nightmarish history—[Thon’s] words light the path to blame. One by one, Thon takes down authorities—the fathers, slave owners, rapists who change and destroy lives. Thon is not afraid of the minutiae of damage—the innards, the fears or the moments of redemption.”—Susan Salter Reynolds,  Los Angeles Times
  • “A collection of harshly honest stories by an underappreciated writer.”—Dan Kois, New York Magazine
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