Evidence of Things Unseen : A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Marianne Wiggins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 11, 2003

This poetic novel, by the acclaimed author of John Dollar, describes America at the brink of the Atomic Age. In the years between the two world wars, the future held more promise than peril, but there was evidence of things unseen that would transfigure our unquestioned trust in a safe future.

Fos has returned to Tennessee from the trenches of France. Intrigued with electricity, bioluminescence, and especially x-rays, he believes in science and the future of technology. On a trip to the Outer Banks to study the Perseid meteor shower, he falls in love with Opal, whose father is a glassblower who can spin color out of light.

Fos brings his new wife back to Knoxville where he runs a photography studio with his former Army buddy Flash. A witty rogue and a staunch disbeliever in Prohibition, Flash brings tragedy to the couple when his appetite for pleasure runs up against both the law and the Ku Klux Klan. Fos and Opal are forced to move to Opal's mother's farm on the Clinch River, and soon they have a son, Lightfoot. But when the New Deal claims their farm for the TVA, Fos seeks work at the Oak Ridge Laboratory -- Site X in the government's race to build the bomb.

And it is there, when Opal falls ill with radiation poisoning, that Fos's great faith in science deserts him. Their lives have traveled with touching inevitability from their innocence and fascination with "things that glow" to the new world of manmade suns.

Hypnotic and powerful, Evidence of Things Unseen constructs a heartbreaking arc through twentieth-century American life and belief.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The redoubtable Wiggins, always fearless in choosing subjects for her work (John Dollar; Almost Heaven) here tells the story of the atomic bomb through the eyes of one average Joe, amateur chemist Ray Foster, or "Fos," of Kitty Hawk, N.C. His fascination with "the kinds of lights nature can produce, the ones not always visible to man," serves him well in lighting the trenches during the Great War in France. When it is over, fellow soldier "Flash" Handy invites Fos to help him start a photography studio in Knoxville, Tenn. In a fated moment, Fos falls in love with a glassblower's daughter, the unflappable and luminescent Opal; they marry, and Opal helps run the studio. Meanwhile, Flash turns out to be a man with many secrets, one so tragic that it separates him permanently from Fos and Opal. Their sorrow at Flash's fate is somewhat forgotten when, after years of infertility, they are granted a baby, named Lightfoot. They move to land Opal inherits in rural Tennessee, but after it is claimed by the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1942, Fos finds a job in Oak Ridge with a government lab that, unbeknownst to him, is on deadline to create the atomic bomb that will be dropped on Hiroshima. In response to that horrific event and other heartache, the Fosters do something desperate that only serves to betray their nine-year-old son. Lightfoot proves to be more courageous and determined than Fos or Opal ever were, and finally finds the only person left in the world who can help him. Wiggins fits her lyrical prose to a distinctly rural, Southern cadence, easily blending the vernacular with luminous imagery, adding bits of poetry, passages explaining scientific phenomena, interpolations about the Scopes trial and even references to Moby-Dick, which serves as a leitmotif. By the time she brings the narrative full circle in a masterful and moving plot twist, she has succeeded in creating "literature as an ongoing exploration of the human tragedy-man's condition." Wiggins comes into her own with this novel, her best book to date.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Ray "Fos" Foster loves just three things in life: anything that lights up; his wife, Opal, the daughter of a glassblower; and his best friend, bemused, cynical Chance "Flash" Luttrell. Fos and Flash, who met in the trenches of World War I, start up a business as photographers in Knoxville, Tennessee, while Opal keeps the books. The first thing Opal discovers is that black sheep Flash is underwriting the whole enterprise with inherited wealth. But their congenial partnership ends badly when Flash falls in love with the 14-year-old daughter of a powerful politician and is jailed for violating the Mann Act. The Fosters head to the country, make a bust of farming, and take in a foundling they nickname Lightfoot. Fos' passion for science leads to work at a secret government facility, where the couple unknowingly contracts a fatal case of radiation poisoning. Things come full circle when Lightfoot turns 18 and, desperate for information about his parents, tracks down Flash. Leave it to Wiggins to make this quirky story of passion and science so hypnotic. The plotting is digressive, the themes are stark, the language is lush, and the idiosyncratic characters are entirely winning. A heartfelt tribute to the risks and rewards of following one's inner lights. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (June 11, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684869691
• ISBN-13: 978-0684869698
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #459,253 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetic, incandescent prose about the mystery of life, January 28, 2005

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Reader from Singapore - See all my reviews

This review is from: Evidence of Things Unseen: A Novel (Paperback)

Marianne Wiggins' "Evidence Of Things Unseen (EOTU)" was an also-ran in the 2003 National Book Awards stake that should have snagged the prize. Shirley Hazzard's "The Great Fire" was a worthy winner but it's also more difficult and less accessible to the reading public.

EOTU is an uncommon masterpiece, a magically uplifting work of American fiction that outstrips anything I have read in recent years. Written in gloriously poetic, incandescent prose, EOTU is ambitious, even epic in scope, yet relentlessly intimate in execution. Wiggins somehow manages to locate the fulcrum that keeps the delicate balance throughout without losing either thread. The story of Fos and Opal is a tender love story on one level and a ode to the mystery of life on another.

Fos is obsessed with light, radiance, phosphorous material, anything that glows in the dark. Opal is the "gem" that drops into his life while on the way to catch the falling stars one night. But unlike the untutored Opal who exudes a quiet wisdom in dealing with life's surprises, Fos hangs his life on harnessing the natural world for the betterment of mankind, so when his faith in science turns around unexpectedly to backbite the hand that feeds it, his world crumbles and dissolves. But just when it seems like science has dealt the couple its most cruel blow, we are reminded that life has also gifted them with Lightfoot, a child that dropped into their lives, as it were, from nowhere. Just as it is capable of delivering Lightfoot to the childless couple, life is equally capable of letting an innocent child bite into a live cable and leave death and destruction in its wake.

When Lightfoot picks up the fallen threads of his life with Flash's help and he meets a girl called Ramona who paints using the invisible glow of fish hearts to illuminate her picture, we know that the cycle of life has once again begun and that it will go on forever.

"Evidence Of Things Unseen" is among the finest of contemporary American literature that deserves to be widely read. Go buy yourself a copy. Don't miss it.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Light, and Love, and Loss, February 18, 2006

By 

Brett Benner (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Evidence of Things Unseen: A Novel (Paperback)

There are many book I read, and truly enjoy, and happily give them a five star review. This is the kind of book that reminds you what five stars should truly represent. A heartbreaking and beautiful love story threaded through the creation of the atomic bomb, and America's call to arms, Wiggins has a bounty of just gorgeous prose at her fingertips that she depenses like cultured pearls. Watching the lives of Fos and Opal as they navigate through major events in American history including two wars, the Scopes trial, and creation of the TVA, is both tenderly fascinating and crushing. This is what fantastic writing is all about.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars pretty spectacular, December 31, 2004

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Michael Ruggiero - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Evidence of Things Unseen : A Novel (Hardcover)

Wiggins does a masterful job of intertwining historical themes (American exceptionalism; ethical traps posed by 20th century scientific advances) with larger themes of love and death. But the book has tremendous heart, her characters are not historical constructs but as alive as people you know. Her prose is lyrical, but always inviting, never pretentious. Highly recommended.