DECEMBER 2017 - AudioFile
In a poignant and authentic tone, narrator Robin Miles brings her love of the theater to the fore in the telling of a little-known true chapter of the Civil War. In early 1861, the tiny hamlet of Town Line in upstate New York seceded from the Union—the only northern town to do so. As the Underground Railroad crosses paths with Confederate spies bent on dragging Canada into the war, Miles gives distinct and vibrant voices to the immigrant German farmers, the runaway slave, and, especially, the young abolitionist, the real-life Mary Willis, who wouldn’t back down from any challenge. Miles gives a compelling and very human voice to a time of strife and redemption. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
07/03/2017
Wang’s uneven first novel chronicles how the Civil War affects the members and acquaintances of the prominent Willis family in Town Line, a small farming community near Buffalo, N.Y., and the only secessionist town north of the Mason-Dixon line. After barely escaping a confrontation with bounty hunters, fugitive slave Joe Bell is hidden by Mary Willis, the progressive daughter of influential Town Line founder Nathan. Joe fled the Virginia plantation where he was enslaved after a run-in with Yates Bell, the resentful son of the plantation owner, who vows to see Joe dead. Joe worries about his sister, Alaura, whom he had to leave behind. Meanwhile, Yates has a foil in Mary’s brother, Leander, who spends much of the book wondering why he’s never good enough for his dad while squandering cash and avoiding his responsibilities. He gives up Joe and gets their father shot in a skirmish, causing a rift between himself and Mary, who manages to prevent Joe from being re-enslaved. As the war goes on, the story focuses on two searches: Joe attempts to locate Alaura while Leander tries to find him. Wang’s characters are either mustache-twirling bad guys or so good they practically glow with righteousness; a bit of nuance would have been welcome. The book’s ending also rings untrue, with the seemingly fierce heroine paired off into a happily-ever-after that comes out of nowhere. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
Daren Wang’s first novel is splendid—a distinctive clear-eyed perspective on a fresh corner of the Civil War. The characters are fully alive, wonderfully varied, and the narrative voice is particularly lucid, in sharp contrast with the raving bloody madness of that dark moment in American history.”
—Charles Frazier, New York Times bestselling author of Cold Mountain, winner of the 1997 National Book Award
“In this fine novel, Daren Wang compellingly depicts the darkness of our country's greatest era of strife, but he also finds courage and love. The Hidden Light of Northern Fires is a wise and timely book."
— Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of Serena and Above the Waterfall
"It is rare day when I thank an author for giving me a chance to read his book for a blurb. Daren Wang's The Hidden Light of Northern Fires is such a book for it turns out, he is such an author. He captured the feel, passion and struggle of a host of characters, both good and bad, living in a time I felt I understand. The language, even the cadence of those words, is spot on. It is a powerful book, a worthy story.” —Robert Hicks, author of The Widow of the South and The Orphan Mother
“Like Robert Penn Warren who turned again and again to history as a subject for his fiction and poetry, Wang examines not only the facts of the past but also creates a utterly believable possible past—one based on considerable research but only brought to vivid life through the lens of imagination. The Hidden Light of Northern Fires is a powerful and important novel about a lost piece of American history.”
—Natasha Trethewey, United States Poet Laureate, 2012-2014, author of Native Guard, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize
"The Hidden Light of Northern Fires brings a little-known piece of the Civil War to vivid life, enriching readers with its clear-eyed understanding of both history and human nature. Deeply imagined and gorgeously written, the novel’s beating heart is Mary Willis, brave, fallible and wholly a product of her time. Wang’s debut will stay with you long after you turn the final page, and it’s perfect for book clubs; you’re going to want to talk about this one." —Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants and At the Water's Edge
"The Hidden Light of Northern Fires is so self-assured I’m shocked it’s a debut. Wang’s absorbing and ambitious first novel brings our history to vivid life in scenes that are by turns brutal and breathtakingly lovely. I will carry this story of love and vengeance, ruin and restoration with me for a long, long time. Read it—you will want to pass it on."
—Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of gods in Alabama
"An instant classic, The Hidden Light of Northern Fires announces the arrival of a major talent, fully matured."
—Da Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Colors of the Mountain
"Mary Willis makes Scarlett O’Hara look like a whiney brat. Sure, The Hidden Light of Northern Fires brings to life an astounding lost story of the Civil War, but is also a stay-up-all-night, read-it-in-one-sitting novel that looses the corseted ladies of the era onto the real world."
—Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City, American Rose, and Liar,Temptress, Soldier, Spy
“The Hidden Light of Northern Fires pulses with visceral emotion, a story where one has the equal and opposite need to quickly turn the page and yet also linger over the palpably beautiful language. A powerful and life-affirming story that asks the important question - are we meant to be free, and if so how? From the intrigue on page one, we are immersed in a world that is in the past, but never gone. With a forbidden love story weaving in and out of the pages, Daren Wang has crafted a novel that will linger in the heart long after its last page.”
—Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author of The Idea of Love and The Bookshop at Water's End
“One true sign of a born novelist is the ability to crawl inside characters who come from a world far from the writer's own time and personal experience. In his ambitious first novel, Daren Wang has done this spectacularly well. The people of his story come alive through the music of their words. This is a vivid study of a corner of Civil War America that feels fresh and unexplored. Like all the best historical fiction, The Hidden Light of Northern Fires opens a window into the present by exploring the past.”
– Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama and Georgia Bottoms
"In Daren Wang’s capable hands, the bloody history of America’s civil war unfolds on the Union side of the Mason-Dixon line, where it turns out to be as heartbreaking and horrifying as it was everywhere else. In Town Line, NY, a hamlet that voted to secede from the Union and declare itself an independent state, the conflict is rendered in microcosm as siblings and friends take up arms against each other. The little-known history that informs The Hidden Light of Northern Fires is nearly as interesting as the vividly portrayed characters who struggle to find the right course of action or to redeem themselves from terrible mistakes. Wang’s engaging novel is a timely reminder of what can happen to a people when human rights are denied and the civil fabric of a nation is torn to pieces."
—Ed Falco, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Family Corleone
"A moving tale of loyalty and betrayal, violence and retribution, lofty ideals and harsh reality. Daren Wang has shined a light on a hidden corner of a story you thought you knew, revealing a divided America that, like our own, is both strange and true."
—Thomas Mullen, author of Darktown and The Last Town on Earth, winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction
“Daren Wang’s luminous first novel, The Hidden Light of Northern Fires, plumbs a national paradox in miniature: Town Line, New York, the only town north of the Mason-Dixon Line to secede from the union. At the center of an impressive array of characters—runaway slaves, confederate agents, vagabonds—is the strong-willed abolitionist Mary Willis, whose difficult family life and tragic love story are the beating heart of this important book: an original take on the mysteries of war that continues to define our nation.”
—Mark Winegardner, author of Crooked River Burning
“From the very first sentence of The Hidden Light of Northern Fires, you know you are in the hands of a masterful storyteller, one who reveals truths, hardships, nuances, and complexities with the eye of an artist. Though set in the past, this is a new story, an important story, one we all need to read. Daren Wang’s first novel is a marvel, and I hope he writes many, many more.”
—Connie May Fowler, author of Before Women had Wings and A Million Fragile Bones
“By unearthing a little known piece of history — that a town in western New York voted to secede from the Union at the start of the Civil War — and then applying his fierce imagination to this real-life discovery, Daren Wang transports us into a gripping and complex world of sibling rivalry, forbidden love, breathtaking cruelty, moral clarity, and hard-earned redemption. This excellent and timely novel asks of its characters the same galvanizing question we find ourselves facing today: Which side are you on?”
—Susan Rebecca White, author of A Place at the Table
"On a large canvas, Daren Wang has given us a portrait of the nation in a time of crisis and war. Peopled by slaves, owners, copperheads, spies, fathers and their sons, daughters and theirs lovers, The Hidden Light of Northern Fires is an at times rip-roarin’, at times tender meditation on the American Civil War and its furious discontents. With a graceful style and a compelling narrative pace, Wang brings to life a cast of characters who seem surprisingly contemporary. A fine debut." —Joseph Skibell, author of A Blessing on the Moon and A Curable Romantic
"Daren Wang’s engrossing first novel is passionate and brave. The Hidden Light of Northern Fires is a richly detailed, genre-changing novel that unearths a fascinating drama that history forgot. It wonderfully subverts the myths that still cling to a time in American history we all believe we understand but don’t." —Jonathan Odell, author of The Healing and Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League
“Just finished reading Daren Wang’s beautiful debut novel, The Hidden Light of Northern Fires. It’s that rare literary novel that’s also a gripping page-turner – a transplanted Yankee’s answer to Cold Mountain. You all need to meet the characters of Town Line, NY, when it’s released at the Decatur Book Festival.” —Josh Jackson, Paste Magazine
Library Journal
06/15/2017
Revenge, righteousness, and a desperation for freedom are the spirits that possess the characters of Wang's first novel. A farm outside Buffalo, NY, in the years prior to the Civil War is the home of the prominent, prosperous Willis family. Daughter Mary returns from college as a staunch abolitionist, and takes to smuggling fugitive slaves toward the Canadian border. One winter night, she comes across a wasted, bleeding Joe Bell, escaped from a Virginia plantation. She hides him, and nurses him back to a semblance of health. When the first shots of war are fired, playboy brother Leander convinces his cronies to join him in the Union Army. But Copperheads (Northern Democrats who oppose the war) and Confederate sympathizers prowl about, and death and destruction come to haunt the area. By the war's end, the hamlet of Town Line (the only town north of the Mason-Dixon line to secede from the Union) is as exhausted as the country is, and yet there are the beginnings of a new land. VERDICT Certainly for Civil War buffs, but readers of modern political fiction will also see some similarities with our present political passions.—W. Keith McCoy, Somerset Cty. Lib. Syst., Bridgewater, NJ.
DECEMBER 2017 - AudioFile
In a poignant and authentic tone, narrator Robin Miles brings her love of the theater to the fore in the telling of a little-known true chapter of the Civil War. In early 1861, the tiny hamlet of Town Line in upstate New York seceded from the Union—the only northern town to do so. As the Underground Railroad crosses paths with Confederate spies bent on dragging Canada into the war, Miles gives distinct and vibrant voices to the immigrant German farmers, the runaway slave, and, especially, the young abolitionist, the real-life Mary Willis, who wouldn’t back down from any challenge. Miles gives a compelling and very human voice to a time of strife and redemption. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2017-06-20
A fledgling abolitionist, Mary Willis turns her family's farm into a stop on the Underground Railroad, but the arrival of Joe Bell endangers everything she holds dear.Joe is on the run from a plantation in Walnut Grove, West Virginia. His master is a temperate man, letting Joe keep some of the money he earns doing expert work at other people's sawmills, and gentle with Joe's younger sister, Alaura. But Joshua Bell's son, Yates, is a hotheaded, jealous, dissipated man eager to take control of his father's estate. Desperate for money, Yates attacks Joe, stealing the money he had saved to buy Alaura's freedom. Joe flees, moving along the stations of the Underground Railroad, until a harrowing encounter with a bounty hunter leaves him with a vicious dog bite and a mortal enemy: Karl Wilhelm. He ends up in Mary's barn, starving and broken. The dog bite forces the local doctor, a sympathetic Quaker, to amputate his leg, and Joe must stay with the Willises as he recuperates, distraught over Alaura's fate and doubting that he'll ever make it to Canada. Meanwhile, Yates has sold off Alaura. Leander, Mary's brother, is sent to Buffalo to advance their father's lumber business, but he falls into the clutches of Isabel, a wealthy widow, who turns his head, corrupts his morals, and drives him headlong into opium addiction. His return home for financial help tragically coincides with Mary's plan to secrete Joe to the next station and Wilhelm's arrival with a marshal ready to arrest Joe and his accomplices. Shots are fired, tragedy strikes, and fates are irrevocably altered. Wang's debut novel ricochets powerfully from blood-soaked barns to battlefields, from domestic tribulations to political espionage. As war erupts, Wang carefully sketches a series of sacrifices and betrayals, leading Mary and Joe to love and Leander to seek redemption. A vivid, compelling portrayal of the heartbreaking price exacted for freedom.
