Sacred Shadows and Latent Light

by Dustin Lawrence Lovell, Thomas Allbaugh (Foreword by)

Overview

When college students Elliot Fleming and Vesta Lloyd agree to join English Professor Rydar Colson's production of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2, they do not know what to expect. Sacred Shadows and Latent Light follows Elliot and Vesta as they prepare for what they assume will be little more than an enriching extracurricular challenge. However, when student reporter Ermine Jackson goes beyond his journalism professor's instruction to lobby the university for a second director, he initiates a campaign to cancel the plays and remove Shakespeare from the university curriculum--and Colson from campus. Between Colson's production and Jackson's crusade, the campus steadily divides, leading to unexpected allegiances, betrayals, questionable accusations, and threats of physical violence. Throughout their time admiring, questioning, resenting, and defending Colson and his production, the characters discover when and how to stand up for their convictions, all the while examining different views on the extent of free speech, the place of the canon in higher academia, the safety and representation of women in society, the growth of "cancel culture" on a changing university campus, and how much is truly involved in what and how one reads.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781666727876
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	12/27/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	308
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Dustin Lawrence Lovell is a writer, tutor, and adjunct Writing professor at Azusa Pacific University. He is a columnist for the UK publication The Mallard, for which he writes literary and cultural commentary. He is the author of A California Kid in King Henry’s Court, a monthly serial satirizing his time at Oxford University, featured in The Mallard’s print magazine. He lives with his wife and daughter just outside of Pasadena, California.

Dustin Lawrence Lovell is a writer, tutor, and adjunct Writing professor at Azusa Pacific University. He is a columnist for the UK publication The Mallard, for which he writes literary and cultural commentary. He is the author of A California Kid in King Henry's Court, a monthly serial satirizing his time at Oxford University, featured in The Mallard's print magazine. He lives with his wife and daughter just outside of Pasadena, CA.
Thomas Allbaugh is the author of Apocalypse TV (2017), a novel, and The View from January (2020), a chapbook of poetry centered on themes of transience and the loss of his son. He is professor of English at Azusa Pacific University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Lovell has managed to capture, in compelling and engaging prose, the zeitgeist of contemporary campus culture on both sides of the Atlantic, with a fascinating array of characters and the relationships they build—and destroy—throughout the novel. Spanning genius introverts and bombastic activists, Lovell’s novel is an instant classic.”

—Jake Scott, University of Birmingham



“The challenge for the writer of fiction is to make our current and perhaps momentary absurdities not into polemics, stereotypes, or social media put-downs but instead to somehow give them human faces and the right nuance. Dustin Lovell has done this. Among the students, professors, and administrators he imagines here, I detect the echoes of a Dostoyevsky novel. Sacred Shadows and Latent Light makes for a rich, compelling work of contemporary fiction.”

—Thomas Allbaugh, Azusa Pacific University

Editorial Reviews

Lovell has managed to capture, in compelling and engaging prose, the zeitgeist of contemporary campus culture on both sides of the Atlantic, with a fascinating array of characters and the relationships they build—and destroy—throughout the novel. Spanning genius introverts and bombastic activists, Lovell’s novel is an instant classic.”

—Jake Scott, University of Birmingham



“The challenge for the writer of fiction is to make our current and perhaps momentary absurdities not into polemics, stereotypes, or social media put-downs but instead to somehow give them human faces and the right nuance. Dustin Lovell has done this. Among the students, professors, and administrators he imagines here, I detect the echoes of a Dostoyevsky novel. Sacred Shadows and Latent Light makes for a rich, compelling work of contemporary fiction.”

—Thomas Allbaugh, Azusa Pacific University

From the Publisher