Mpr News With Kerri Miller

“A Lesser Light” is Minnesota writer Peter Geye’s sixth novel, and he says he couldn’t have written it earlier in life. The story revolves around a cold and often hostile marriage. It’s 1910, and husband Theodulf is the newly commissioned caretaker of a grand lighthouse situated on the treacherous shore of Lake Superior. His new bride, Willa, has been forced into the marriage by her scheming mother after a family tragedy. The terrain is brooding, the climate unforgiving. Maybe no surprise, the new relationship is equally harsh. But Geye says the complexity of Theodulf and Willa are what make them human, and as he’s gotten older, he appreciates the “many shades” of their rocky marriage. “Of all the institutions in our culture, marriage and parenthood are two of the most fraught,” Geye tells host Kerri Miller. “They can be the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most amazing — and I don’t know a whole lot of people who end up together like Theodulf and Willa do. But it’s more interesting to me when people l