Josh Weil The Age of Perpetual Light

Annotation

Beginning at the dawn of the past century, in the early days of electrification, and moving into an imagined future in which the world is lit day and night, each tale in The Age of Perpetual Light follows characters through different eras in American history: a Jewish dry goods peddler who falls in love with an Amish woman while showing her the wonders of an Edison Lamp; a 1940 farmers’ uprising against the unfair practices of a power company; a Serbian immigrant teenage boy in 1990s Vermont desperate to catch a glimpse of an experimental satellite; a back-to-the-land couple forced to grapple with their daughter’s autism during winter’s longest night. From the prize-winning author of The Great Glass Sea, these stories explore themes of progress, the pursuit of knowledge, and humankind’s eternal attempt to decrease the darkness in the world.