Quote:Radiance is a psychological and spiritual odyssey. It is the story of an American family emerging from the perils of the Great Depression into a post-war America basking in the material comforts of a new society. Gerald and Georgia Brennan have escaped the poverty and sorrow of rural Indiana and are determined to leave all traces of those memories and feelings behind. Their son, Jimmy, is waking up beneath the shadow of a society bent on forgetting all it can of suffering and his parents' determination to eliminate pain.
The novel begins in contemporary time with Jimmy, as a grown man, caring for his dying mother on the last day of her life. From that moment, the book makes its way through time zones like an archaeological dig. It sifts through cultural strata, evoking the likes of Perry Mason and Dagwood Bumstead to illustrate the determining forces of the American psyche.
Radiance is a love song. Though it begins in the darkness of personal and national tragedy, it soars with the discovery of that which enlivens and sustains all life. It reveals the inseparable nature of the psychological and the spiritual and the remarkable relationship of suffering with the ever-present and radiant source of being.