Like Light, Like Music

Lana K. W. Austin teaches writing at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals. Winner of the 2019 Alabama State Poetry Society Book of the Year Award and the 2018 Words and Music Poetry Award, Austin has an MFA from George Mason University.

Title Page Chapter 1 Chapter 2< Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Acknowledgments

"Like Light, Like Music captures the way the past haunts us and shapes our reality. With the help of their ancestors, the resilient McLean women are determined to prove the innocence of one of their own. The pulse of this lyrical novel beats: Believe women. Believe women. Believe women." Savannah Sipple, author of WWJD and Other Poems "Austin has written a highly original and captivating novel filled with the mountain music and lore she loves so much-haints, broonies, banshees, shades, and revenants share the stage with all the memorable real characters of Red River, Kentucky. Contemporary issues merge with a developing romance in this spellbinding story, truly a ballad itself." Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls and Guests on Earth "This is a novel about the light of vision, and music in the blood. Emmeretta has the 'mountain gift' of synesthesia, and she sees with her ears as well as with memory and imagination. But Like Light, Like Music is also a mystery story about uncovering secrets of the past, of family bonds and family ghosts. It is about the pain at the heart of country music, and joy in the place the music comes from. It is a story of the complexity of family ties and romances, and of the way confronting painful truths can make us free. It is a ballad of a novel, both timely and timeless." Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek and Chasing the North Star "Like Light, Like Music is a novel full of divergences that pursues the loves, lives, and lore of kith and kin. In it, a town's haunting is a reason to delve into community's stories-full of 'despair merging with magnificence.'" Foreword Reviews