The Rise of Light: A Novel

by Olivia Hawker

A powerful novel about the expectations of family—and the risks and liberation of defying them—by the Washington Post bestselling author of One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow.

1975. In the town of Rexburg, Idaho, aspiring artist Aran Rigby, his younger sister, Tamsin, and their two brothers are locked in orbit around their emotionally abusive father. Gad is the kind of man who soothes the failures of his own life by controlling the lives of others. But Aran and Tamsin are united in rebellion against their father. They understand each other. They have dreams beyond their small town.

Arriving in Rexburg is Linda Duff, an outsider from Seattle hoping to plant new roots far from the bitter ones of her childhood. She’s quickly taken with Aran, in no small part because of his talent. But when they fall in love, Linda is drawn into a family more damaged than the one she left behind. She also becomes privy to a secret Aran and Tamsin share that could dismantle everything everyone holds dear.

Upsetting the precarious balance in the Rigby home, Linda becomes an unwitting catalyst for the upheaval of Gad’s oppression. Now it’s time for them all to break free of the past, overcome the unforgivable, and find a new way forward—whatever the price.

• ISBN10: 1542022452
• ISBN13: 9781542022453
• Publish Date: 17 August 2021
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Amazon Publishing
• Imprint: Lake Union Publishing
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 428
• Language: English

Reviews

[Jeff Sexton]

Complicated Yet Beautiful. Hawker has a way of painting pictures with words that are utterly beautiful, and yet also utterly ugly at the same time. Ultimately, this book reads like a more evocative, more painting quality version of the somewhat similar story David Duchovny created in Truly Like Lightning, even as it seems that both authors were working on these works for quite a number of years. Particularly in their showing of the worse sides of Mormon life, complete with overbearing and hypocritical fathers, this reads almost like as much an attack on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as the character study that it is. And yet, again, the way Hawker executes it here is utterly beautiful in its prose and storytelling. Hawker sucks you in, weaving these plot threads near and around each other before bringing them all together to grand effect. Ultimately the biggest quibble with this entire effort isn't Hawker's writing, but the actual description of the book - which leads one to believe certain aspects arguably happen sooner than they do. Indeed, Linda becoming "privy to a secret Aran and Tamsin share that could dismantle everything everyone holds dear" happens quite late (later than 80%, maybe even closer to the 90% mark), though again, the actual execution here is quite solid and indeed allows the book to end in surprising ways that were only very subtly hinted at much earlier. Even Aran and Lucy getting together to begin with seems to happen much later in the tale than the description seems to indicate, though that relationship *is* particularly well developed. Ultimately this is a book that Mormons likely won't like, people with various misconceptions about Mormonism will probably tout, but one that tells a remarkable tale in the end. Recommended.