A Sudden Light

by Garth Stein Narrated by Seth Numrich

Overview

When a boy tries to save his parents' marriage, he uncovers a legacy of family secrets in a coming-of-age ghost story by the author of the internationally bestselling phenomenon, The Art of Racing in the Rain.

In the summer of 1990, fourteen-year-old Trevor Riddell gets his first glimpse of Riddell House. Built from the spoils of a massive timber fortune, the legendary family mansion is constructed of giant, whole trees, and is set on a huge estate overlooking Puget Sound. Trevor's bankrupt parents have begun a trial separation, and his father, Jones Riddell, has brought Trevor to Riddell House with a goal: to join forces with his sister, Serena, dispatch Grandpa Samuel-who is flickering in and out of dementia-to a graduated living facility, sell off the house and property for development into "tract housing for millionaires," divide up the profits, and live happily ever after.

But Trevor soon discovers there's someone else living in Riddell House: a ghost with an agenda of his own. For while the land holds tremendous value, it is also burdened by the final wishes of the family patriarch, Elijah, who mandated it be allowed to return to untamed forestland as a penance for the millions of trees harvested over the decades by the Riddell Timber company. The ghost will not rest until Elijah's wish is fulfilled, and Trevor's willingness to face the past holds the key to his family's future.

A Sudden Light is a rich, atmospheric work that is at once a multigenerational family saga, a historical novel, a ghost story, and the story of a contemporary family's struggle to connect with each other. A tribute to the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, it reflects Garth Stein's outsized capacity for empathy and keen understanding of human motivation, and his rare ability to see the unseen: the universal threads that connect us all.

Editorial Reviews

OCTOBER 2014 - AudioFile

Effective ghost stories are always about atmosphere and characters who struggle to uncover secrets that are best left undiscovered. In this one, master storyteller Garth Stein finds a consummate collaborator in talented narrator Seth Numrich. Fourteen-year-old Trevor, who is trying to keep his divorcing parents together, has moved into a mansion on Puget Sound with his father. As the story unspools, Numrich’s smooth delivery, caring tone, and perfect pauses allow the growing horror to creep into your psyche. Numrich shines at portraying Trevor’s teenaged angst, especially his longing to understand adult decisions. Goosebumps are guaranteed as Numrich’s performance elevates this tale of twisted terror to heights attained by Poe and Lovecraft. It’s that good. R.O. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

07/07/2014
In a complete change of pace from his dog-centric The Art of Racing in the Rain, Stein transports the reader to Riddell House, a 100-year-old mansion made entirely of wood overlooking Puget Sound. Jones Riddell and his 14-year-old son, Trevor, move there following the failure of Jones’s business and his ensuing separation from Trevor’s mother. Jones has come to Riddell House to help his younger sister, Serena, persuade their Alzheimer’s-afflicted father to sell the family land, which is worth a fortune, to housing developers. But supernatural forces stand in the way of the deal. Clever Trevor, as he is called, begins to see ghosts and have visions. Researching the history of the Riddell clan—rapacious timber barons—he finds that it is rife with sexual secrets, incest, illness, and even madness, which forces him to realize that his dream of seeing his family whole again might come at too great a cost. With its single setting and small cast of characters (ghosts not included), the story’s feeling of claustrophobia adds to the tension. Stein dramatizes the various tensions between his characters well, although narrator Trevor comes off as a tad precocious for 14. The history of the Riddell family fails to shock after a while, even as events in the present lead to the tragic denouement. (Sept.)

BookPage

A Sudden Light is the best of many genres: a ghost story, a love story, historical fiction….a truly killer read…a bold, poignant book about wealth, family ties, and the power—and fallacy—of memory.

Maria Semple

Wow! I devoured A Sudden Light, a grand, gorgeous, multi-generational epic of the Pacific Northwest. Garth Stein has given us another singular, soulful, and wise narrator for the ages, who tells us a story full of mystery and yearning. I adored this book.

The Dallas Morning News

"Remarkable....Stein's prose is assured, gorgeous, and magnificently atmospheric....Cheers to Garth Stein for showing us compassion, empathy, and incredible talent."

Historical Novels Review

"Heart-wrenching, poignant, joyful.... Garth Stein is a master storyteller!"

Aspen Daily News

A story of empire-building, fathers and sons, family and environmental destruction, secrets kept and promises broken…a book worth reading.

Boston Globe

"A 14-year-old boy trying to patch his family back together and a centuries-old ghost drive this novel's explorations of the connections between the living and the dead, parents and children, and what it means to be stewards of the land."

Queen Anne & Magnolia News

"Stein's beautiful writing packs a velvety punch and is pure pleasure to read. A Sudden Light entertains with suspenseful story lines and satisfies with its message of family, story, and redemption."

Steamboat Pilot & Today

"Imbued with strong, quirky characters and the smell of place, the allegiances of family and the realization of mystery...When all is said and done, and you have turned the last page, you find you have loved the journey."

starred review Booklist

"Haunting in all the right ways."

Robert Goolrick

This magnificent and haunting ghost story will pull you into its world and hold you captive, awe you with the enduring power and beauty of nature, and, on every page, fill you with amazement at Stein’s infinite compassion for the human condition…. A major achievement by a major American writer.

Jamie Ford

"Take equal parts mystery, lyrical magic, and a healthy dose of natural wonder, add a multi-generational family struggling with the ghosts of the past, literally and figuratively, and you have A Sudden Light—a beautiful, deeply thought-provoking story that is impossible to put down."

Deseret News

"Commanding...formidable...robust and well-written with beautifully clever diction and unexpected plot twists"

Good Housekeeping

"A haunting family saga."

Interview Magazine

"Set against the stunning beauty of the Pacific Northwest and told with expert angst, empathy, poetry, and mystery, Stein has created an ode to nature and redemption...in turns touching and classically sinister, with surprising twists."

Seattle Times

"Rich and textured...Stein is resourceful, cleverly piecing together the family history with dreams, overheard conversations, and reminiscences...a tale well told."

Minneapolis Star Tribune

"A captivating page-turner."

People

Witty, atmospheric and filled with acutely observed characters, Stein’s ghost story possesses uncommon depth.

Library Journal - Audio

03/01/2015
Trevor Riddell, now an adult, remembers his experiences and discoveries from the summer when he was 14, which he spent at his family's home near Seattle. Trevor's parents are newly separated, and his father takes him to visit his dysfunctional relatives—mysterious Aunt Serena and a senile grandfather—where things aren't as they may seem. The enormous house is rife with secret stairways, ghosts, hidden rooms, and long-lost diaries. Stein's dark descriptions of the house, the Pacific Northwest, and the characters are superb, although the story can be slow-moving at times. Seth Numrich provides an engaging and believable narration. VERDICT Of interest to fans of Stein (Racing in the Rain) and contemporary ghost stories. ["While this purported ghost tale starts strong, an earnest environmental message and other philosophizing bogs it down in a silly, overly dramatic plot," read the review of the S. & S. hc, LJ 9/15/14.]—Denise Garofalo, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170917563
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	09/30/2014
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

A Sudden Light – prologue –
Growing up in rural Connecticut, I had been told the name Riddell meant something to people in the Northwest. My paternal great-great-grandfather was someone of significance, my mother explained to me. Elijah Riddell had accumulated a tremendous fortune in the timber industry, a fortune that was later lost by those who succeeded him. My forefathers had literally changed the face of America—with axes and two-man saws and diesel donkeys to buck the fallen, with mills to pulp the corpses and scatter the ashes, they carved out a place in history for us all. And that place, I was told, was cursed.

My mother, who was born of English peasant stock on the peninsula of Cornwall, made something of herself by following her passion for the written word, eventually writing the dissertation that would earn her a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University and becoming the first in her family to receive an advanced degree. Though she never did anything of note with her brilliance, she did carry it around with her like a seed bag, sprinkling handfuls of it on what she deemed fertile soil. She spent much time quoting literature to me when I was young, thus sparking my own avid reading habits. So the theme of the Ancient Mariner and his story, as told by the poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge—and how the Mariner’s story was emblematic of my family’s history—was something I had heard often before my fourteenth birthday.

The curse. When one destroys something of beauty and nature—as did the Mariner, who shot the kindly albatross that led his ship out of the perilous Antarctic seas—one will be punished. Cursed. My mother told me this; my father nodded when she did. Punishment will rain down upon the offender and the family of the offender, I was told, until the debt is settled.

The debt owed by my family has been paid, and then some. My mother believes our family’s story was settled with that debt—she has always maintained an unyielding faith in the cathartic power of denouement—which is why she has chosen to go for a walk this morning, rather than stay with us to hear me tell our story again. But I disagree with my mother: there is no tidy end to any story, as much as we might hope. Stories continue in all directions to include even the retelling of the stories themselves, as legend is informed by interpretation, and interpretation is informed by time. And so I tell my story to you, as the Mariner told his: he, standing outside the wedding party, snatching at a passing wrist, paralyzing his victim with his gaze; I, standing with my family at the edge of this immortal forest.

I tell this story because telling this story is what I must do.

Twenty-some years ago, before technology changed the world and terrorism struck fear into the hearts of all citizens. Before boys in trench coats stalked and murdered classrooms full of innocent children in schools across this fair land. Before the oceans were thick with oil slicks and the government ceased to govern and Bill Gates set out to love the world to death and hurricanes became powerful enough to stagger entire cities and toxic children were drugged into oblivion to drive up the profits of Big Pharma, and genetically modified foodstuffs were forced upon us without us knowing we needed to care. Before smoking marijuana at gay marriages became passé—before gay people became, eh, just like anyone else, and weed became, eh, just another source of tax revenue. This was even before another famous Bill, the one surnamed Clinton, became famous for his choice of cigars. It seems like ages ago, looking back on it. No smartphones. No On Demand. Nary an iPad in sight.

So long ago. Yes. This story begins in 1990.

On a hot July day in Seattle, a sickly pea green rental car drives from Sea-Tac airport northward on Interstate 5, through the sprawl of neighborhoods hidden by hills, tucked away behind bridges and bodies of water. Its passengers, a father and a son, don’t speak to each other. The boy is nearly fourteen, and he is unhappy. Unhappy with being displaced from his childhood home and forced on an unwanted road trip. Unhappy with his mother for not being with him. Unhappy with his father for simply being. So he doesn’t speak; he concentrates on Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which he listens to intently through the headphones of his Walkman.

His father looks over at him frequently, nervously. He seems to crave the boy’s approval, which the boy will not give. As they approach the city from the south, the boy glances up and notices the Space Needle, that ubiquitous and baffling Seattle icon. He winces at the irrelevance of the monument—who on earth would build such a thing, and what kind of citizenry would keep it?—and lowers his eyes again to his shoes, which are far more interesting to him.

He doesn’t notice as they drive through the city, but drive through the city they do. They emerge on a high bridge.

“Don’t you want to see this?” the father says, finally, desperately, tapping the boy’s shoulder and indicating the glory of Seattle all around them.

The boy lifts his eyes and looks around. Bridges, lakes, bland buildings, radio towers, floatplanes, mountains, trees. He’s seen it.

“No,” he says and returns his focus to his music. The voices chant at him: Tear down the wall. Tear down the wall.

And so my story for you begins.

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