Woman of Light

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s bestselling first novel Woman of Light (2022) follows her short story collection Sabrina & Corina (2019), an American Book Award winner. As Fajardo-Anstine acknowledges in her Book Club Guide, the novel tells the story of her ancestral family. Like protagonist Luz “Little Light” Lopez, the author comes from a diverse background including ancestors of Mexican, Pueblo, and European heritage. In a fantastical twist, Luz possesses clairvoyance, a hereditary gift. The novel follows her family as they face oppressive police policies and racial violence—with female members facing additional burdens of diminished economic opportunity and sexual violence.

This guide is based on the One World paperback edition, published in 2023.

Content Warning: This guide describes and discusses the novel’s treatment of alcohol addiction; anti-gay bias; racism and racist violence; sexual advances toward a minor; sexual assault; forced abortion; and stillbirth.

A note on language: This guide uses the term Chicanx to describe characters of Mexican origin who live in the United States and the term Latinx to describe characters of Latin American origin. The guide employs the acronym BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People/Person of Color) to discuss the novel’s depiction of racism and discrimination against these individuals and communities.

Plot Summary

Woman of Light is told in nonchronological order, shifting between different decades of the 20th century to link different events. Waking one winter night, Desiderya, the Sleepy Prophet, perceives she must go into the wilderness in search of a child. She finds an infant, Pidre, who is a child of Pueblo and Mexican descent. She raises Pidre Lopez for 11 years in the village of Pardona before her death, prophesying that he will go into the wider world, meet a fierce woman, and have two daughters.

As a young man, Pidre leaves Pardona and does well as a businessman in the emerging industrial world of southern Colorado. In the mining town of Animas, he arranges the purchase of a red-rock natural structure to make an amphitheater for local citizens. His business partner is Mickey, who, unlike him, reads English. Pidre visits a traveling show and sees a famous sharpshooter, Simodecea Salazar-Smith, who accidentally killed her husband when a bear attacked her during one of their acts. He hires her, making her the main attraction in his show—which prospers.

Pidre and Simodecea become lovers and unite in a cultural ceremony. They have two daughters, Sara and Maria Josie (Josefina). Sara, who shows signs of clairvoyance from early childhood, is a compliant child, while Maria Josie is independent and adventurous. When Pidre learns that a train runs near Pardona, he takes his family to see his native village—only to discover it is gone. Simodecea learns that radium miners have arrived in Animas, and their numbers and negative influence grow. She finds that Pidre’s deed to the amphitheater does not include mineral rights, meaning the family will lose their land. Three men come to their house one morning and confront Pidre in the yard as Simodecea watches from the house. In the ensuing dispute, the men shoot and kill Pidre. Simodecea shoots all three intruders. Realizing she cannot stay in their home, she coaches Sara and Maria Josie what to do if she is apprehended and takes them to the train station. Sensing imminent arrest, she tells her daughters to run.

Eluding capture, Sara and Maria Josie make it to the village of Saguarita and hide in a church. Benevolent locals take them in and raise them, though no single household can afford both—so they live apart. They seek each other out whenever possible and dream of leaving Saguarita, which is also a mining town. Sara persuades Maria Josie to attend a dancehall where miners of many nationalities gather. There, Maria Josie resists the ploys of men. Sara meets Benny, who introduces her to alcohol. Eventually, she lives with him, and they have two children, Diego and Luz. Benny moves the family to another mining town, Huerfano, where they live in a mining camp. Diego and Luz come home early from school one day, and find Benny packing his possessions. He takes all the family money and leaves in a mining company car.

Maria Josie becomes involved with a doctor of German heritage. When she tells him that she is pregnant, he gives her a drug that causes her to lose the child. As she recovers, she decides to leave Saguarita and walks toward Denver, Colorado. Upon arriving, Maria Josie lives in a women’s boarding house. To wash her clothes, she must find a stream of water. A flash flood causes a teenage boy to fall into her chosen creek, and she saves his life. The boy is David, whose father is Papa Tikas, a Greek grocer. The two men never forget Maria Josie’s heroic act.

Sara has an alcohol addiction and feels she can no longer care for her children. She sends Diego and Luz to Denver, where Maria Josie takes them in. They live in a fifth-floor tenement in a building called Hornet Moon, and connect with their distant cousin, Lizette, and her family—her mother Teresita and father Eduardo. Diego matures, becoming a handsome young man whom many women find attractive. He works in a rubber factory and performs as a snake charmer, using his two pet rattlesnakes. Luz works in a laundry with Lizette, where they clean the clothes of white citizens. Luz, called “Little Light” by her brother and others, earns a following by accurately telling fortunes via tea leaves. When Eleanor Anne, a white paramour of Diego, becomes pregnant, the men of her family find Diego at a social gathering and beat him with a brick.

After Teresita treats Diego, he decides he must leave Denver and heads north to work in fields. The absence of Diego’s share of rent places financial hardship on Maria Josie. Luz responds by talking herself into a job as David’s assistant. She becomes enmeshed in his work, experiencing a courtroom hearing, reading a statement on behalf of one of David’s clients over the radio in English and Spanish, and accompanying him to dinner at an exclusive restaurant where only white people are ostensibly welcome. When the KKK marches to David’s suite and breaks into the outer office, Luz hides with David beneath his desk. There, he engages in sexual advances, but stops at Luz’s insistence.

Seventeen-year-old Luz has her first boyfriend, handyman and trumpet player Avel Cosme. Though attracted to him, she is less invested in the relationship than Avel. He asks her to marry him, and she reluctantly agrees, though tells no one of the proposal but Lizette. Lizette plans to marry Alfonso, her Filipino boyfriend. The Russian seamstress whom she asks to sew her wedding gown recognizes her sewing ability as well. Lizette begins to work for her on weekends, offsetting the cost of the gown. The wedding is a grand affair, with much drinking and dancing. Avel takes an 18-year-old Luz into a laundry closet, where he kisses her and says he cannot wait until they wed. Lizette finds them and tells Avel that it is time for his band to play for the guests. Then, David finds Luz and takes her to the same closet. As they embrace, Luz decides to give herself to David. As they engage in intercourse, Avel discovers them. David walks away, and Avel takes back the ring he gave to Luz. She feels ashamed and confesses to Lizette and Maria Josie. She writes to Diego, insisting he return to Denver to help the family.

In a drunken rage, Avel enters David’s empty law firm and sets it aflame. When Luz arrives the next morning, she sees David walking among the ashes and decides she does not want to work for him anymore. Upon receiving Luz’s letter, Diego leaves the fields and heads to Denver. Along the way, he has several romantic encounters. In a graveyard, he discovers the headstone of his father. Arriving in Denver, Diego and other family members go to a Saint Agnes Children’s Home where he claims Lucille, his infant daughter by Eleanor Anne.