Minneapolis novelist Peter Geye will discuss ‘A Lesser Light’ with Kerri Miller for Talking Volumes

Only one author is named on the cover of Minneapolis writer Peter Geye’s new novel, “A Lesser Light,” but he says he has collaborators.

Those collaborators are the characters in the North Shore-set novel, which Geye (pronounced “Guy”) will discuss with Kerri Miller at a Talking Volumes event in Duluth, sponsored by MPR News and the Minnesota Star Tribune, at 7 p.m. May 1. “A Lesser Light” hinges on a love triangle involving a lighthouse keeper, his wife and a neighbor.

“It really is a partnership. It sounds weird to describe it like that, but it is. I am relying on them to help me tell the story,” said Geye of “Lesser Light,” which takes place in 1910. It opens with Theodulf and new bride Willa arriving at a Split Rock-like lighthouse, both harboring secret resentments about the events that have brought them there. Those secrets come out over the course of 532 pages, during which Willa develops friendships with neighbor Mats and his niece Silje while Theodulf agonizes over opportunities lost.

We spoke with Geye about characters that surprise him, finding time to write and the timeless allure of the North Shore:

Q: You live in Minneapolis but you’ve made the North Shore your literary home. How did that come about?

A: I had written a couple books, as an aspiring writer, about places like the south of France, where I’d never been at the time. They were not good books, they never would be published and, in analyzing what wasn’t working, one of the big things is that there was no connection to the place. So I had the conscious thought, “What are the places you are inspired by, that you’re happiest in?” And the North Shore was first on the list. Almost as soon as I made that declaration, I started thinking about stories there to tell.

Q: One of which was about a lighthouse?

A: It’s hard not to cast your gaze at the Split Rock Lighthouse and wonder what would have happened way back when.

Q: And the lighthouse led you to the characters?

A: I spent many years contemplating who these people would be, what they’d be doing there. This is true of pretty much all my books. There are notes for this that go back a decade. More, actually.

Q: How do you know you’re ready to take the plunge?

A: I knew Willa was in this book, a character with her name who very much resembles this Willa, as soon as I thought I would write the book. I had a vague sense of her, what her condition in life would be. It’s almost like watching clouds pass. I’d think about her and start filling in some blanks of her life. Once I can’t take my eyes off a character like that, I know it’s time to take a couple steps forward.

Q: You’ve said that when things are clicking, it’s like you step into the character’s shoes and they make decisions you weren’t expecting. Did they surprise you in “Lesser Light?”

A: The relationship between Willa and the young girl, Silje, did. Practically ever interaction they had, and maybe this is because I’m bad at making friends myself, every interaction felt like a surprise. I hate for it to sound ethereal — it requires concentration and focus to get them into the position to make these connections — but there is another element that feels like it’s out of my hands.

Q: What was the hardest part to get right in “A Lesser Light?”

A: The hard part is figuring out where the fatty stuff is. For me, the fattiness is almost always a result of redundancy, where I have a scene I love or an interaction I love, so I do it a couple more times. It’s not the exact same scene but they’re similar enough that it feels like they are happening two or three times. There was a fair amount of that, especially in scenes between Willa and Theodulf. Their scenes were fun to write and a big part of what I thought the story was about, but they ended up being similar.

Q: Is that hard to let go of?

A: It is, but this is book number six and I’m not as precious about it. I have an ax in a splitting wall and the reason is to get rid of scenes like those.

Q: I’m very glad you didn’t get rid of a neighbor named Mrs. Wilson, who seems like a creep at first but ends up being a mentor to Willa. She’s not central to the action but she’s my favorite character, I think.

A: I recall with perfect clarity writing those scenes where Mrs. Wilson, who’s one of my favorite characters, too, is giving those lessons on being a wife to the other wives. I was at the Madeline Island School of the Arts. I had a residency there. I wrote, like, 50 pages in a week and a good chunk of them were those scenes with her. She just came to life, although I had no plans for that. But it was an example of me following Willa when she was going to learn something new.

Q: Between coaching ski-jumping and residencies and co-parenting a bunch of kids, is it tricky to find writing time?

A: I’m not a religious person but the stories I tell, the moralities they grapple with, the lives of the characters — those are standing in for something, which is that this is where I derive a lot of the spiritual meaning in my life. I’m talking about the books I write, of course, but also the books I read. So it’s a job, yes, but also something I couldn’t live without and would do even if I weren’t making a modest income from it.

Q: Like many authors, you believe a book isn’t complete until it’s in the hands of readers, who will make of it what they will. Have they ever shown you something you didn’t realize was in your books?

A: I remember being sent by my publicist an essay, written by someone who eventually became a friend, that described “The Lighthouse Road” in the way a good English student might. Really got into some specifics of language and what he thought those choices meant, all sorts of biblical allusions. Really smart. And I was like, “None of this was intentional.” The fact that a character named Hosea is named Hosea, he went into a whole thing about biblical Hosea. But he was really named Hosea because my favorite contestant on “Top Chef” that year was named Hosea. It was instructive. it helped me get to this understanding that, “Now it’s the readers’.” I wouldn’t have been comfortable with that at one point, but now I am.

Q: So, in a way, many versions of the book can exist at once, almost like a film adaptation of a movie, where the book’s still there, no matter what the movie does with it?

A: Yes. Actually, my first book [“Safe From the Sea”] was optioned a long time ago for film and in fact it was just re-optioned last week again. It’s so outside of my purview now: “Thanks for the chicken scratch and I’ll take it and I hope you make a beautiful movie.” But I really won’t have anything to do with it. I watched them take the book and write a script — this was back in 2012. The script was fabulous but it wasn’t the book. It omitted most of the book.

Q: Why do you think you’re so devoted to the North Shore and its history and mythology?

A: That history has always been important to me. I have known the elemental parts of that since I was a kid, camping there. I’m so grateful that place has been a part of my life, truly from my earliest memories, because it has informed all this work. This strip of land and rough water is this place I get to go to, over and over again, even when I’m not there.

A Lesser Light

By: Peter Geye.

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 532 pages.

Events: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Norway House, 913 E. Franklin Av., Mpls. $20 (includes $10 coupon). Talking Volumes with Kerri Miller, 7 p.m. May 1, Mitchell Auditorium at the College of St. Scholastica, 1200 Kenwood Drive, Duluth. $27, mprevents.org.

Excerpt from “A Lesser Light”:

“Bless me father, for I have sinned,” she began, recalling the rules she was expected to abide by. “This is my first confession since January.”

She saw an inscrutable smile rise in his beard. His eyes were closed again, and she could sense as much as see a kind of ecstasy in his fluttering lids at having won her voice. This sickened her — that she should be so unfaithful to herself, that she should let this man and his simplemindedness prevail upon her — and in order to quell the nausea, she had a fiendish idea.

“I have had impure thoughts,” she lied. “I have been covetous and I have been desirous and that’s not the whole of it.” She saw his own eyes glance sideways at her. If he was dubious, she couldn’t tell, so she pressed on. “I have lain with another girl. I would do so again.” She feigned a caught breath.

At this he gasped, but because he was genuinely surprised. Perhaps even stricken.

Before he could regain his bearing, she added, “I have injured. I have taken the Lord’s name in vain.” She felt gleeful and hurried through a litany of false sins. Idolatry, envy and covetousness, blaspheming, sloth. What else was forbidden?

Across the grounds, Theodulf reappeared with her chest. He set it on the path and continued to the lighthouse, avoiding her gaze as he passed. During their courtship, such as it was, he had spent their Saturday afternoons not promising primroses and complimenting her beauty, but proselytizing and praying and laboring over the ten commandments, as though her conversion meant his salvation. That she so easily convinced her husband of her righteousness, well, it was a small thrill. Especially now, as she paid this entry toll into her new life.

“Is that all, child?” Father Richter asked.

What she didn’t confess was that her true sin, born only in those moments with Father Richter, staring at her husband beneath the lighthouse, in full regalia, was that she felt murderous.

Instead of confessing anything more, Willa merely nodded in answer to the priest’s query. And as he prayed over her soul — granting her pardon, assuring her absolution, and assigning her penance — she made a silent vow: her covenant would be with the wilds — the wolves and water and celestial bodies. She would remain as agnostic as nature. And as cunning.