Children of the Light

Weston is the author of a book on the poetry of Wallace Stevens and it is not surprising that her first novel should take up some of Stevens's major motifs. They are embodied in the book's protagonist, a young dreamer who is forced to choose between seductive fictions and stubborn, sordid reality. Jeremy Towers embarks on a canoeing trip in contemporary America, is enveloped in a fog, and finds himself transported to a transformed world a few generations after a nuclear war. Here he joins the small, faltering community of Idamore, reluctantly accepts his fate and confronts his own preconceptions along with the physical necessities of a life in the junk heap of civilization. Weston imaginatively details the shifts in sexual mores and ethical behavior, and her characters are touching in the range of their responses to their conditions, from withdrawal and madness to dogged optimism. This is a fine entry in the large post-holocaust genre. December 27