Lighthouse Island

August 5, 2013
Jiles’s latest (following The Color of Lighting) is a lyrical take on dystopian fiction set in an arid, borderless future in which a surfeit population has caused the totalitarian government’s Agencies to resort to drastic survival measures. “People disappeared but everybody pretended not to notice and stayed neutral and colorless like fabric lampshades.” Nadia Stepan, deserted by her family when she was four, leads a lonely existence centered on her fantasies about living on Lighthouse Island, a magical place advertised on TV, promising serenity in a natural setting. A chance encounter leads her to James Orotov, a mysterious man who says he has knowledge of her long-imagined destination and possible safe routes to it. Nadia must learn to trust James while hoping that the technical know-how and connections he claims to possess will be enough to travel safely without arousing the suspicion of the authorities. The dangerous plot James hatches is like that of one of Nadia’s beloved classic novels. The real test, however, consists of living without the restrictions that have defined their existences up until now. Jiles’s prose is a striking match for the barren landscape of this moody adventure tale. Agent: Liz Darhansoff, Darhansoff & Verrill.

May 15, 2013

New York Times best-selling author Jiles typically sets her novels in the past, but here she's off to a future world with too many people, hardly any animals or water, and no borders, maps, or numbered years. The orphaned Nadia Stepan survives by dreaming of Lighthouse Island, where she heads when she breaks from her foster family. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2013
A quest novel set in the future, when America has become a vast megalopolis divided into "Gerrymanders" and water is a scarce resource in a new "Drought Age." At the age of 4, Raisa is abandoned by her parents and taken to an orphanage. She officially becomes a PD--a Parentless Dependent--and is given a new name, Nadia Stepan. Although she has an eye condition that temporarily renders her blind, Nadia learns from television (which pervades the culture, along with Big Radio) about Lighthouse Island, a land presented as a Utopian refuge from all that ails the vast city that America has turned into. It's presented as a place of "no buildings, no water rationing, only landforms, and random plants, fossils, silence, solitude, [and] mountains...." We also learn of James Orotov, a paraplegic meteorologist and demolitions expert fascinated by geography, whose maps lead to suspicions of his being guilty of "[c]artographical treason." Nadia eventually grows up and becomes adept at lying as a survival technique, and when Oversupervisor Blanche Warren discovers that she has had an affair with Blanche's husband, Nadia decides to escape by going to Lighthouse Island. Eventually, her path crosses with James', and he explains to her the vastness--and perhaps impossibility--of her undertaking. Nadia and James in due course fall in love and get married--and help each other on the long journey north to Lighthouse Island. When they arrive, they find it's scarcely the Utopia it's cracked up to be. Jiles writes beautifully but paces the novel glacially.

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October 1, 2013
Jiles' dystopian novel, set in an overpopulated world ravaged by drought, follows a young woman on her quest to find her way to an island haven. Orphaned as a child, Nadia Stepan finds refuge in literature after her beloved guardian is arrested. As a young woman, Nadia has little aptitude for the government PR job she's assigned to, and an affair with an Oversupervisor's husband costs her the position and nearly her freedom. Nadia decides to flee to Lighthouse Island, an island in the Pacific Northwest that is rumored to have water and wildlife in abundance. Nadia finds an unlikely ally in James Orotov, a demolitions expert who was crippled in a blast many years before. After a fateful rooftop meeting, James aids Nadia in her flight, using his access to the system to help her avoid detection and arrest until he, too, falls into disfavor and has to flee. An unfortunate style and a world that, at times, feels cartoonishly evil mar Jiles' otherwise compelling odyssey, which picks up considerably once Nadia and James are reunited.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)