Description: "Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero--everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an eighteen-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas's backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most importantly, themselves"--
Brief description: Matthew Quick is the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, which was made into an Oscar-winning film; eight other novels, including We Are the Light, a main selection of the Book of the Month Club; and the memoir, Dad, Love, Me, which The New York Times lauded and named an Editors' Choice. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention, was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, a #1 bestseller in Brazil, a Deutscher Jugendliteratur Preis 2016 (German Youth Literature Prize) nominee, and selected by Nancy Pearl as one of Summer's Best Books for NPR. The Hollywood Reporter has named him one of Hollywood's 25 Most Powerful Authors. Matthew lives with his wife, the novelist Alicia Bessette, in Beaufort, South Carolina.
Review Quotes: "When you read Quick, you don't feel guilty if your tears are mixed with laughter. . . . His skill at crafting an engaging narrative around trauma is as strong as ever. . . . We Are the Light is a reminder that grief is complex and that we shouldn't be afraid to grasp the hands stretched out to help us. As the title points out, even in the dark, there can be light." -Karin Tanabe, The Washington Post "We Are the Light is a testament to the broken and the rebuilt. . . . Quick's deeply moving epistolary novel is a balm." -Booklist (starred review)