Earl Boudreaux, the protagonist of Michael Parker's stunning new novel is one of the great inventions in recent fiction. Watching this beautiful dreamer get lost in a netherworld where fate, and drastic human error are disastrously intertwined, I realized that "Earl" is just another word for the hopeful, hopeless, yearning, worn-out soul of America. Parker is just flat out astonishing.
Marisa Silver
Author of The Mysteries, Little Nothing, Mary Coin
A gut punch of a novel—lyrical, mordantly funny and wrenching.
Kelly Link
Author of Music for Beginners and Get in Trouble, 2018 MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist.
I Am the Light of This World is as true and moving a book, as honest, as gripping, as any I have ever read. I continue to be haunted by this tragic novel--its note-perfect depiction of clueless youth, its bad breaks, bad choices, bewilderments and quirks, and, above all, the small moments of mercy that give hope in the midst of a hopeless situation. How do you piece together a broken life that wasn't much in the way of whole to begin with? With a career's worth of powerhouse fiction already in the books, Michael Parker has delivered his strongest work yet. I Am the Light of This World is a novel of truly singular beauty and wisdom.
Ben Fountain
Author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award
I Am the Light of This World is a grimy, gutsy, glorious, novel and one of my favorite books in recent memory. Somehow, Michael Parker channeled the ghosts of Kent Haruf and Harry Crews (the good angel and the bad) to write this literary gem which is as lowdown and gritty as it is graceful and profound. An unforgettable novel that sings out on every page.
Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Godspeed