REVIEWS

CHANGING LIGHT

“You can almost smell the pinion smoke and the tortillas frying in Nora Gallagher’s evocative first novel...[she] effortlessly conjures the real and the imagined in language as clear as the Southwestern landscape...The novel’s inevitable chase unfolds sumptuously, over red chile, blue-corn enchiladas and sudden desert snowstorms, flashing back and forth in space and time from Chicago to Europe, from the Manhattan art scene to the dusty heights of Los Alamos ... Gallagher has mined the scientific and historical record scrupulously, but she doesn’t lard her narrative with science lessons or art lectures either. Her description of the manufacture of bomb molds has the spare precision of a lab notebook...”
- The New York Times Book Review

“Light, of course, counts here. It changes for the painter and informs her vision as she sees and re-sees the landscape of both New Mexico and her own heart, ‘breaking things up into their parts or shapes, or their essences.’ The physicist actually changes the light, and he’s caught up in ‘our gift, our desire, to see a thing in the world that once was only in our minds’ until he understands that the political powers cannot resist using it. The priest finds his own quiet light of faith and honor and it carries him as he had not imagined.
   “Elegiac, intimate and probing, Changing Light is an auspicious beginning that maintains considerable tension as Nora Gallagher’s characters find what Leo knows: ‘a narrow margin of hope...That’s all I require.’”
- Lin Rolens, Santa Barbara News Press

“A debut that’s garnering some buzz. Think of it as Manhattan meets the Manhattan Project.”
- Globe and Mail (Canada)

“Changing Light’s themes are about love passion, betrayal and loyalty, and author Nora Gallagher weaves these pivotal events of history into an exquisitely written love story.”
- Curled Up with a Good Book at www.curledup.com

“...Gallagher beautifully captures the fears and ideals of the scientists who spoke out against the monster they had created...”
- Los Angeles Times Magazine

"This commendably ambitious novel is insistently readable, energized by lush descriptions of southwestern vistas and efficiently dramatized historical materials...a vivid, thoughtful book that earns the reader's attention and respect. And the story of Los Alamos cannot be told too often."
- Kirkus Reviews

In her novel Changing Light, Nora Gallagher sets out in a new literary direction. Long known as a writer of theologically reflective memoirs about life in the church (Things Seen and Unseen, 1998) the spiritual dimensions of life crises (Practicing Resurrection, 2003), and as a print and online essayist (Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Beliefnet.com, Explorefaith.org), Gallagher has now written a novel that explores the emotional, religious, and ethical dilemmas of human beings in a new mode. Changing Light is at once a love story, a thriller, and a reflection on the demands of conscience. It is a serious novel about serious problems. And it is a wonderful read.

Gallagher’s prose is always elegant and sinuous, but it never calls attention to itself. As with Flaubert, we know ourselves to be in the presence of a shaping artistic presence, but that presence never intrudes upon the action or the characters. Changing Light accepts its characters as they are, and it provides a remarkable exposition of the social and moral world in which they operate…An exceptional work of fiction.
– Gary R. Hall, Anglican Theological Review

"Eleanor and Leo are marvelous characters-damaged but not prone to melodramas-and through them Gallagher touches on themes of Loss, independence and intractable morality. Gallagher's first foray into fiction distinguishes itself in an intriguing and spiritual tale."
- Publishers Weekly

"Breaking things down to truth and light—not just paintings and atoms—but the nature of self, the sources of faith and the purpose of life. This is the subject of Gallagher's ambitious, moving and insightful novel.
- Los Angeles Times

"An elegantly written, deeply intelligent, literary romance."
- San Francisco Chronical

"Changing Light is a beautifully crafted story, thoughtfully conceived, written and unusual emotional precision and moral clarity."
- Boston Globe

ADVANCE PRAISE

“Known for reporting on ordinary people in extraordinary times, Gallagher focuses here on outright extraordinary people.”
– More Magazine

“Changing Light is a lyrical and passionate novel that takes on some of the largest matters of our day with no loss to its intimacy. Conviction that writing matters the way life matters is Gallagher’s hallmark, and this reader is her grateful beneficiary.”
– Thomas McGuane, author of “Gallatin Canyon”

“An elegiac and tenderly-written love story between a stranger and an artist on a high New Mexico mesa under the looming cloud of an atomic bomb, secret pasts, and hidden passions.”
– Gretel Ehrlich, author of “The Solace of Open Spaces”, “Heart Mountain” and “Islands, The Universe, Home”

“An incredibly beautiful story with echoes of Ondaatje and McEwan. Haunting and unforgettable, this is a smashing fiction debut from one of our most thoughtful writers.”
– Martha Sherrill, author of “The Ruins of California”

“At last, a novel about something. Nora Gallagher captures with dazzling beauty the lives of a woman and a man caught in the grip of history and our country’s shadowed past. I held my breath reading it.” 
– Annie Dillard, Author of “For the Time Being” and “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

“Changing Light is a remarkable love story, told against the backdrop of Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the final innocent days of the world before the atom bomb. Nora Gallagher has effortlessly moved into the world of fiction, bringing her understanding of the spiritual life to her characters, and revealing the importance of faith, not just in religion, but between people, and among the inner workings of science and art.”
– Hannah Tinti, author of “Animal Crackers”

“This is a spare, beautifully crafted story about people trying to sort right from wrong under unforgiving circumstances. When good and evil partake of each other, when knowledge alone cannot separate the two, and when time has run out, then moral certainty becomes impossible. Yet the characters of this story, like all of us at one time or another, must somehow choose and live with the consequences. Nora Gallagher is no stranger to these themes, in her non-fiction work, she has already led us beyond the seen and the known to where feeling guides us. Here she goes it in fiction, and she has given us a jewel of a novel.”
– Mark Slazman, author of “Lying Awake”

“Changing Light is a love story about desperate people with brains, told quietly and passionately, and stuffed with clear New Mexico light; specifically, the terrible, majestic lights and shadows of Los Alamos in ’45, when The Bomb was born. It unfolds in a remote place that was very near the heart of the 29th century, it is as truthful as an old ballad, and nearly as elegant as Einstein’s physics.”
– Peter Behrens, author of “The Law of Dreams”

“The moral power of Nora Gallagher’s voice, so evident in her essays, resounds through her first novel. This is a book that deals wisely with many things—love, work, creativity, even physics. But it’s about simplicity in complex situations—i.e., about the lives that all of us lead in the modern age.”
–Bill McKibbe, author of “The End of Nature”

“Once again, Nora Gallagher has written, with compassion and grace, about the things that matter. Changing Light is a thoroughly imagined, spiritually courageous glimpse into a moment in time when good and evil might have been one and the same. By turns thriller, love story, and historical mystery, Gallagher turns out to be every bit as talented a novelist as she is a writer of gorgeous non-fiction.”
– Sue Halpern, author of “A Book of Hard Things”


PRACTICING RESURRECTION

“Honest and human and surprisingly humorous in its clarity of vision.”
 - The Washington Post
 
“Gallagher is a thoughtful and talented writer who succeeds in making questions of belief, politics and tradition part of a wholly personal story that will engage open-minded readers of all faiths.”
- San Francisco Chronicle
 
With a poet's ear for language and a novelist's eye for essential detail, Gallagher offers a compelling story of her journey toward "a wholeness bought at the cost of suffering."
- Publisher’s Weekly

“As explorations go, Practicing Resurrection is one of the best, in a company with Henri Nowen’s Genessee Diary or Dorothy Day’s memoirs of the Catholic Worker.”
- Jim Goodmann, Sewanee Theological Review

ADVANCE PRAISE

"A stunning book about faith and the writing life; what I like best is that it gradually and unexpectedly turns into a love story."  
- Annie Dillard, author of “For the Time Being”

"The bookstore is crowded with volumes offering instant enlightenment and painless growth. This isn't one of them. This is a true book, about faith and about doubt and about the daily things that inform a soul -- and one of the finest things I've read in a very long age."
- Bill McKibben, author “The End of Nature and Enough”

"Once again, Nora Gallagher is able bring words to the ineffable, and to make audible the language of prayer, especially the prayer that emanates from everyday life--from marriage and friendship, from work and family....a  gorgeous, deeply honest, wise book." 
- Sue Halpern, author of “Four Wings and a Prayer”

"In her beautifully written and engaging memoir Nora Gallagher shows us what it is like to live inside a mind, body, and spirit that is trying to discern the next step in the world. She invites us not only to witness her journey, but to take the rich journey that is discernment for ourselves." 
- Debra K. Farrington, author of “Hearing With the Heart: A Gentle Guide to Discerning God's Will for Your Life”

"Nora Gallagher is a rafiqi, a guide who can negotiate for us safe passage through treacherous and unfamiliar terrain. Her writing is honest and sober and she doesn't flinch from all that is possible in this world, neither the nightmare nor the waking vision. I am grateful for her hands at the keyboard and for her wise heart dictating."
 - Gregory Maguire, author of “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West”

"Nora is a breath-taking writer. She is a writing and spiritual influence in my writing life. In Practicing Resurrection, Nora writes about the loss of her 'own wild life.' This is one of the best books I've ever read about finding one's way in the world. This is a book for anyone who wants to find the juice again."
- Jennifer Louden, author of “The Woman's Comfort Book”

THINGS SEEN & UNSEEN

"Gracefully written and moving ... Things Seen and Unseen starts with Nora Gallagher entering the labyrinth of her life ... and ultimately it leads to the center of her being."
- The Boston Globe

“The deep serenity that suffuses Gallagher’s work, the lyrical cadences in which she writes, do not blunt the sharp edges of what she discovered in her quest for meaning.…”
 - Los Angeles Times

"Like Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace, Gallagher is renewing the language of ultimate concerns."
- San Francisco Chronicle

 “An ordinary year, a typical parish, a fascinating read.”
- Episcopal Life

“Gallagher juxtaposes personal sagas brilliantly with the church year...A beautifully rendered portrait of the day-to-day.”
- Kirkus  
                    
“Gallagher’s account is more than that of a woman rediscovering her faith in God. It is also a glimpse into a sort of practical mysticism.”
- Booklist

ADVANCE PRAISE

"This is a wonderful book. I laughed more often than I cried, but I did both. Nora Gallagher is perfect company, both witty and deep, and she describes church life and spiritual life with absolute accuracy." 
- Annie Dillard, author of “A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

"The story of a 'thin place,' this book is itself a thin place where the boundary between the sacred and the everyday becomes soft and porous, and the veil lifts. An absorbing, compelling, insightful and poetic narration of a year in the life and lives of a mainstream congregation, it mediates 'things unseen' through The seen. A book of exceptional excellence."
- Marcus Borg, author of “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time”

“You can read Things Seen and Unseen for its great beauty, and when you have read past beauty, you can read this book for its depth of feeling. And when you have read past depth of feeling, past this book’s stunning evocation of the arc of the Christian year, you read on and on, unwilling to stop, overcome by the generosity of Nora Gallagher. Her pentrating gift o the reader is a vision of working, suffering, rejoicing faith.” 
- Verlyn Klinkenborg, author of  “The Last Fine Time”

“Nora Gallagher’s brave journey ignites the faith-starved, who waver between spiritual need and unwillingness to heed traditional orthodoxies or accept the frightening spectacle of info-church. She opens her own faith strand by strand, illuminating every woman’s struggle of indescribable love, unsteady hope, and a toughness we often presume to be fragile and flawed. Hers is a soul that quickens.”
- Ellen Meloy, author of “Raven’s Exile”