Slant Of Light

 

Title:  Slant of Light

Author:  Steve Wiegenstein

Published:  Blank Slate Press  2012

Recognized:  Debut Author

Pages:  303

Source:  ARC from Publisher
Genre:  Contemporary Fiction

Slant of Light combines powerful story elements in a historical setting rife with political and moral issues; the American Civil War, Abolition of Slavery, and Utopian dreams of building a community founded on "principles of common ownership, complete democracy, and no particular religious bias."  James Turner, the protagonist, is a writer and lecturer with enough charisma to enthuse common people to pick up their lives and families and join him in creating a new town in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri.  This town would be governed with strong principles of justice and equality, all ideas being based on a fictional novel he has written entitled "Travels to Daybreak."  In Turner's novel, the island inhabitants gather together to greet each day, reciting their anthem together:

"Where there is inequality, let us bring balance.

Where there is suspicion, let us bring trust.

Where there is exclusion, let us bring openness.

Where there is division, let us bring harmony.

Where there is darkness, let us bring Daybreak."

James Turner, his wife Charlotte, and others, earnestly believe that real people could truly live as the fictional characters in Turner's book.  Just imagine the possibilities (or realities?) when "the gray areas"  of life present themselves and test the members of the Daybreak Community.

Steve Wiegenstein does a wonderful job addressing the emotional, political, and moral issues (and human responses) which can occur within a co-habitating group of people.  His personal experience with the Missouri Ozarks setting shines through in the story details, enabling the reader to have a vivid mind picture as the story unfolds. Congratulations to Steve for a book well-written!  And thank you again, Blank Slate Press, for allowing me to read a very engaging story!

Favorite Quotes

"Remarkable how the slave-state Missourians took to his message of the rights of man and the evils of capital.  Apparently they could appreciate in the abstract what they could not embrace in the particular."

"Perhaps the horrors of war blind a man to the higher possibilities of mankind."

"Today he had sat on his rock at the river while thoughts rushed noisily in and out of his head like passengers through a train station, each of them intent, directed, but interfering with the others, jostling and shoving, giving him the sensation of aimless disorder."

"He wanted to find out for himself what kind of light could be drawn from a human soul.  And by God, the soul is a bright thing when you rub off the dirt that's on the surface."

Steve Wiegenstein has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Missouri, Columbia and is currently the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at Columbia College in Columbia, MO. Since learning about an 1840s-era commune situated among the Comanches in north Texas, he has been fascinated by Utopian societies. In Slant of Light, he has combined his academic interest with his passion for history, fiction writing, and his long family heritage deep in the Missouri Ozarks. Slant of Light is his first novel.

Link to beautiful book trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhjn6OU0_4c&context=C47f30b9ADvjVQa1PpcFN6D-sR2T0axTKXTpOovYLHNiRoYed8i78=

Find out more/Visit Steve's Blog:

http://blankslatepress.com/authors/steve-wiegenstein/