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4.5 

Take One Candle Light a Room

By Susan Straight
Take One Candle Light a Room by Susan Straight digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

From the author of A Million Nightingales (“a writer of exceptional gifts and grace”—Joyce Carol Oates) comes a luminous new novel about the forces that tear families apart and the ties that bind them together.
 
Fantine Antoine is a travel writer, a profession that keeps her happily away from her Southern California home. When she returns to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of her closest childhood friend, Glorette, she finds herself pulled into the tumultuous life of Glorette’s twenty-two-year-old son—and Fantine’s godson—Victor. After getting involved in a shooting, Victor has fled to New Orleans. Together with her father, Fantine follows Victor, determined to help him avoid the criminal future that he suddenly seems destined for. On this journey her father will reveal the wrenching secrets of his past, and Fantine will be compelled to question the most essential choices she’s made in her life.  

2 Reviews

4.5
“I've enjoyed Susan Straight's essays in Salon for many years and I really liked the first novel of hers that I read- Highwire Moon. I was immediately involved with the characters in this book and cared deeply about their stories. The characters explore many different levels of what family, history and genetic legacies mean to each of us. I believe that The author has tremendous compassion for all of the inhabitants of the novel without creating stereotypical heres or villains. She writes real people having the kind of surreal experiences that occur more often than we would like to think. The drama and turmoil we can see bearing down us but too often we think we can just ride it out or hope will just blow over.”

About Susan Straight

Susan Straight is the author of six novels, including A Million Nightingales and the National Book Award finalist Highwire Moon. She has written for The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Magazine, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Her short stories have won an Edgar Award and an O. Henry Award. She teaches at the University of California, Riverside.

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