Book Review: Slant of Light

Slant of LightSlant of Light by Steve Wiegenstein

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Inspired by dreams of building a utopian society, James Turner, a charming writer and lecturer, Charlotte, his down-to-earth bride, and Cabot, and idealistic Harvard-educated abolitionist, are drawn together in a social experiment deep in the Missouri Ozarks. With Civil War looming, they are confronted with the hardships of building and sustaining a new community while staying neutral in an increasingly divided country. As love, longing, and betrayal, renegades, slave-catchers, and soldiers threaten to destroy their dreams, they discover that even the loftiest of ideas are at the mercy of politics and personal desire.

I chose this book because I live in Missouri and I thought it would be fun to read and learn about Missouri’s history during the time of the Civil War. Because James Turner’s utopian community, Daybreak, was somewhat isolated from the outside world the book wasn’t overloaded with historical facts. It had a good balance between the plot within Daybreak and the happenings of the outside world that inevitably creeps into life at Daybreak.

The characters are what really drives this novel. The three main characters – James, his wife Charlotte, and their friend Adam, start out as starry-eyed idealists, hoping that Daybreak will be the community of their dreams. When they start to see that reality and forces beyond their control will make building and maintaining Daybreak a struggle, we start to see their flaws. I liked that these characters were multi-dimensional and certainly not perfect. They made mistakes but I was able to sympathize with them and keep liking them.

I have to mention that since I Iive on the Missouri side of the Missouri/Kansas border, I thought this line from the beginning of the book was hilarious: “Politics was a game for reasonable men, and Kansas was no place to be reasonable.”

This book gave me a lot to think about and I was still mulling it over several days after reading it. Could a utopian community ever really work? Would we want it to? What would the purpose be? When James Turner tries to explain to someone that the purpose of Daybreak is to set an example for those around them, the man responds, “In other words, if I walk among murderers and thieves, my moral obligation is simply to avoid being a murderer and thief myself so that they may profit by my example.” Is that enough – what is the obligation of the members of an utopian community to the outside world? This book would be a great book club selection with these and so many other issues to discuss.

This book is published by Blank Slate Press, a small, independent publisher. Because of that I think it needs – and deserves! – some help in getting a buzz going about how good it is. I highly recommend Slant of Light. Get it, read it, talk about it. Spread the word!

Come back tomorrow to read a guest post from author Steve Wiegenstein.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book. Check out the other tour stops:

Monday, May 14th: Unabridged Chick
Wednesday, May 16th: WV Stitcher
Monday, May 21st: Life in Review
Wednesday, May 23rd: So Simply Sara
Thursday, May 24th: Bookish Habits
Monday, May 28th: Historical Tapestry – guest post
Tuesday, May 29th: A Novel Source
Thursday, May 31st: Life is Short. Read Fast.
Wednesday, June 6th: Just One More Paragraph
Saturday, June 9th: Colloquium

Buy this book at:
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