Winter Light

by Peter Thompson

”...in a different light I could have seen the headmaster as a young man- a slender young man- coming to that school with the vision of a bright jewel in the immemorial hills... where did I lose his dream of that place? He came to that town and that campus as to a snow-globe world as perfect and full of quiet joys as his classical studies had been....The purple night could simply have been the deep New Hampshire sky. The crusted glint of that winter could have been merely cozy. The shadows dire and dark could have... The rants could have been spared and... the violence.” An action-packed romp as the Latin teacher Rhodes maneuvers the absurd banalities and long winter of a New England Prep School. Thompson’s writing is fresh and irreverent, keenly intelligent with flourishes of light and music.
-- Sonja Livingston , author of Ghostbread Practical vs. Reckless. Confused vs. Focused. Conformist vs. Renegade. In Winter Light , Peter Thompson’s protagonist, Rhodes, embodies these various opposing and conflicted psyches that have defined the idea of yearning within the modern American novel. And through them, Rhodes certainly takes his place among that cast of unsettled, well-meaning yet troubled characters of the literary landscape—standing alone in the fields, parting the weeds, and trying to spot their dream.
-- Adam Braver , author of November 22, 1963

188 pages, Paperback

Published June 7, 2016

About the author

Peter Thompson is Sydney Mayer Lecturer in Early American History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. Cross College.