The shorter one giggled through blue teeth and licked the last of her candy. The taller of the two girls said, “Bruja stuff?” They gawked at Luz’s teakettle and leaves, her tackle box of coins. Two younger girls had slowed their pace, dissolving cotton candy onto their tongues.

“Can I interest you ladies in a reading?” Luz asked. Young people had unlaced their boots and removed their stockings, wading into the moon’s reflection.

Rail yards and coal smelters coughed exhaust, their soot raining into the South Platte River. Denver’s skyline around them, pointed and gray, a city canyon beneath the moon. It was an annual festival, a grouping of white tents and a lighted main stage. The old man swore and tossed a nickel into Luz’s tackle box, leaving the booth with the hunkered posture of a man bickering with himself. “You’ll have to give it up,” Luz said sweetly. (June)Ĭorrection: An earlier version of this review misstated the location of a fictional town and misidentified a character’s nationality.A festival, tea leaves, colorful cast converge in 'Woman of Light' CloseĮach week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author. Agent: Julia Masnik, Agency: Watkins/Loomis Agency. Despite the uneven effort, it’s clear this author has talent to spare. Unfortunately, Fajardo-Anstine’s Denver lacks the same historical precision she gives to the Lost Territory portions, and is limited to a few plugged-in period details. Luz uses her family connections to become a secretary in a law office where she finds herself in a love triangle with her attorney boss and a young mariachi musician. Luz entrances with visions dredged from reading tea leaves, but her gift of seeing often portends ominous circumstances such as racist violence from the KKK.

The author describes it wonderfully: “a pistol crack, a long rifle’s pinging bullet, the exasperated neigh of a horse.” The narrative centers for the most part on seer Luz “Little Light” Lopez, who leads a hardscrabble life in 1930s Denver with her aunt Maria Josie and her brother, Diego, a snake charmer and womanizer. Pidre Lopez, the family’s anchor and a Puebloan Indigenous person, settles in Animas, Co., where he runs a Wild West show. Depictions of the Lost Territory are vivid and well-informed. Fajardo-Anstine’s impressive if underdeveloped debut novel (after the collection Sabrina & Corina) recounts the harrowing multigenerational adventures of a family originating in the “Lost Territory” of late 19th-century New Mexico and arriving in Denver by the 1930s.

Woman of light kali