Carleton College is very pleased to present author Peter Geye on Thursday, Nov. 1 at 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the Gould Library Athenaeum. Currently touring the nation in support of his highly anticipated and already critically acclaimed second novel, “The Lighthouse Road,” Geye’s appearance is free and open to the public. Copies of Geye’s work will be available for purchase at the event and also in advance at the Carleton Bookstore.
“The Lighthouse Road” is an evocative tale that operates on many levels: the experiences of a young immigrant settling into life outside Duluth in the 1890s; the struggles of her orphan son as a young man, falling in love with the one woman he shouldn’t and using all his skills to build them a future; and, as a taste of regional history, as a ruthless man builds his own empire, shielded by the impenetrable woods and wild snows from any higher authority. Like his debut novel, “Safe from the Sea,” Geye lovingly explores the life of the North Shore that he knows so well.
While the book is only recently released, “The Lighthouse Road” is already garnered significant acclaim:
"’The Lighthouse Road’ is a small marvel of a book. The story is set in northern Minnesota in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Geye's expert rendering of a time long past—the brutality of backwoods logging camps, the heartbreak of an era when immigration meant never going home again, the logistics of whiskey-running—is matched by the complexity and depth of his characters. A beautifully written, elegantly constructed novel." -- Emily St. John Mandel
"Peter Geye writes with the mesmerizing power of the snowstorms that so often come howling off Lake Superior. I am in awe of how he swirls through so many years and juggles so many characters, all of them unforgettable and weighed down by secrets and regrets and desires that burn through the hoarfrost of Geye's bristling sentences."-- Benjamin Percy
“As he demonstrated in his award-winning ‘Safe from the Sea,’ Geye deeply understands the hardship and isolation of those largely Scandinavian immigrants who made their living from fishing and shipping in the cold wilderness of Minnesota's Superior shoreline. In a land where ‘the hours of daylight shriveled until it seemed there was hardly any purpose to the sun rising at all,’ and taciturnity was the norm (Odd's boatbuilding teacher was ‘a widower, childless, and the least garrulous man in a town full of reticent men’), those who survived and thrived were those who could compromise and adjust to the injustice of men and the indifference of nature. ‘The Lighthouse Road’ gradually pulls us in to an often bleak time and place where only tenacity and dreams can build a life with a future." – Bruce Jacobs
Born and raised in Minneapolis, Peter Geye received his BA from the University of Minnesota. His travels took him around the country to earn his MFA from the University of New Orleans, and his PhD from Western Michigan University, where he was editor of Third Coast. He then returned to Minneapolis and lives there with his wife and three children. He is the author of the Northeast Minnesota Award-winning novel, “Safe from the Sea.”
This event is sponsored by the Carleton Bookstore. For more information, call (507) 222-4150 or email bookstore@carleton.edu.
