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/
