From Publishers Weekly
The redoubtable Wiggins, always fearless in choosing subjects for her work (John Dollar; Almost Heaven) here tells the story of the atomic bomb through the eyes of one average Joe, amateur chemist Ray Foster, or "Fos," of Kitty Hawk, N.C. His fascination with "the kinds of lights nature can produce, the ones not always visible to man," serves him well in lighting the trenches during the Great War in France. When it is over, fellow soldier "Flash" Handy invites Fos to help him start a photography studio in Knoxville, Tenn. In a fated moment, Fos falls in love with a glassblower's daughter, the unflappable and luminescent Opal; they marry, and Opal helps run the studio. Meanwhile, Flash turns out to be a man with many secrets, one so tragic that it separates him permanently from Fos and Opal. Their sorrow at Flash's fate is somewhat forgotten when, after years of infertility, they are granted a baby, named Lightfoot. They move to land Opal inherits in rural Tennessee, but after it is claimed by the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1942, Fos finds a job in Oak Ridge with a government lab that, unbeknownst to him, is on deadline to create the atomic bomb that will be dropped on Hiroshima. In response to that horrific event and other heartache, the Fosters do something desperate that only serves to betray their nine-year-old son. Lightfoot proves to be more courageous and determined than Fos or Opal ever were, and finally finds the only person left in the world who can help him. Wiggins fits her lyrical prose to a distinctly rural, Southern cadence, easily blending the vernacular with luminous imagery, adding bits of poetry, passages explaining scientific phenomena, interpolations about the Scopes trial and even references to Moby-Dick, which serves as a leitmotif. By the time she brings the narrative full circle in a masterful and moving plot twist, she has succeeded in creating "literature as an ongoing exploration of the human tragedy-man's condition." Wiggins comes into her own with this novel, her best book to date.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Ray "Fos" Foster loves just three things in life: anything that lights up; his wife, Opal, the daughter of a glassblower; and his best friend, bemused, cynical Chance "Flash" Luttrell. Fos and Flash, who met in the trenches of World War I, start up a business as photographers in Knoxville, Tennessee, while Opal keeps the books. The first thing Opal discovers is that black sheep Flash is underwriting the whole enterprise with inherited wealth. But their congenial partnership ends badly when Flash falls in love with the 14-year-old daughter of a powerful politician and is jailed for violating the Mann Act. The Fosters head to the country, make a bust of farming, and take in a foundling they nickname Lightfoot. Fos' passion for science leads to work at a secret government facility, where the couple unknowingly contracts a fatal case of radiation poisoning. Things come full circle when Lightfoot turns 18 and, desperate for information about his parents, tracks down Flash. Leave it to Wiggins to make this quirky story of passion and science so hypnotic. The plotting is digressive, the themes are stark, the language is lush, and the idiosyncratic characters are entirely winning. A heartfelt tribute to the risks and rewards of following one's inner lights. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
This poetic novel, by the acclaimed author of John Dollar, describes America at the brink of the Atomic Age. In the years between the two world wars, the future held more promise than peril, but there was evidence of things unseen that would transfigure our unquestioned trust in a safe future. Fos has returned to Tennessee from the trenches of France. Intrigued with electricity, bioluminescence, and especially x-rays, he believes in science and the future of technology. On a trip to the Outer Banks to study the Perseid meteor shower, he falls in love with Opal, whose father is a glassblower who can spin color out of light. Fos brings his new wife back to Knoxville where he runs a photography studio with his former Army buddy Flash. A witty rogue and a staunch disbeliever in Prohibition, Flash brings tragedy to the couple when his appetite for pleasure runs up against both the law and the Ku Klux Klan. Fos and Opal are forced to move to Opal's mother's farm on the Clinch River, and soon they have a son, Lightfoot. But when the New Deal claims their farm for the TVA, Fos seeks work at the Oak Ridge Laboratory -- Site X in the government's race to build the bomb. And it is there, when Opal falls ill with radiation poisoning, that Fos's great faith in science deserts him. Their lives have traveled with touching inevitability from their innocence and fascination with "things that glow" to the new world of manmade suns. Hypnotic and powerful, Evidence of Things Unseen constructs a heartbreaking arc through twentieth-century American life and belief.

ANNOTATION

Finalist for the 2003 National Book Award, Fiction.

Finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This poetic novel, by the acclaimed author of John Dollar, describes America at the brink of the Atomic Age. In the years between the two world wars, the future held more promise than peril, but there was evidence of things unseen that would transfigure our unquestioned trust in a safe future.

Fos has returned to Tennessee from the trenches of France. Intrigued with electricity, bioluminescence, and especially x-rays, he believes in science and the future of technology. On a trip to the Outer Banks to study the Perseid meteor shower, he falls in love with Opal, whose father is a glassblower who can spin color out of light.

Fos brings his new wife back to Knoxville where he runs a photography studio with his former Army buddy Flash. A witty rogue and a staunch disbeliever in Prohibition, Flash brings tragedy to the couple when his appetite for pleasure runs up against both the law and the Ku Klux Klan. Fos and Opal are forced to move to Opal's mother's farm on the Clinch River, and soon they have a son, Lightfoot. But when the New Deal claims their farm for the TVA, Fos seeks work at the Oak Ridge Laboratory -- Site X in the government's race to build the bomb.

And it is there, when Opal falls ill with radiation poisoning, that Fos's great faith in science deserts him. Their lives have traveled with touching inevitability from their innocence and fascination with "things that glow" to the new world of manmade suns.

Hypnotic and powerful, Evidence of Things Unseen constructs a heartbreaking arc through twentieth-century American life and belief.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

There is roughness in Evidence of Things Unseen, an occasional grandiloquent reach beyond its fictional grasp. Rarely, you sense Wiggins spurring her story to lift it to the next stage, or chivying a sentence to snare a sublimity. This time, though, she has schooled her winged horse to transport human riders. — Richard Eder

The Los Angeles Times

Hideous tragedies are nothing new in Wiggins' work; her warm portrait of abiding love embedded in marriage is the real surprise. Brilliantly charting the shifting currents of Fos and Opal's relationship over two decades, Wiggins gradually leads us to the understanding that while, for Fos, his wife is enough, Opal can't be entirely happy without the baby they have failed to conceive -- and her husband knows it. With this poignant, realistic portrait of two people who love one another deeply but not equally, Wiggins may have tapped a vein of common humanity that will bring Evidence of Things Unseen a wider audience than her earlier work. — Wendy Smith

The Washington Post

This nice little story would be quite sufficient for a delightful reading experience, but Wiggins has a more ambitious agenda. Foster's name (Ray, as in X-ray) is a not-too-subtle clue that he will have some symbolic role to play, and sure enough he functions as a modern mythic figure in the final third of the book, when the science that enthralled him becomes his nemesis. — Charles Platt

Publishers Weekly

The redoubtable Wiggins, always fearless in choosing subjects for her work (John Dollar; Almost Heaven) here tells the story of the atomic bomb through the eyes of one average Joe, amateur chemist Ray Foster, or "Fos," of Kitty Hawk, N.C. His fascination with "the kinds of lights nature can produce, the ones not always visible to man," serves him well in lighting the trenches during the Great War in France. When it is over, fellow soldier "Flash" Handy invites Fos to help him start a photography studio in Knoxville, Tenn. In a fated moment, Fos falls in love with a glassblower's daughter, the unflappable and luminescent Opal; they marry, and Opal helps run the studio. Meanwhile, Flash turns out to be a man with many secrets, one so tragic that it separates him permanently from Fos and Opal. Their sorrow at Flash's fate is somewhat forgotten when, after years of infertility, they are granted a baby, named Lightfoot. They move to land Opal inherits in rural Tennessee, but after it is claimed by the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1942, Fos finds a job in Oak Ridge with a government lab that, unbeknownst to him, is on deadline to create the atomic bomb that will be dropped on Hiroshima. In response to that horrific event and other heartache, the Fosters do something desperate that only serves to betray their nine-year-old son. Lightfoot proves to be more courageous and determined than Fos or Opal ever were, and finally finds the only person left in the world who can help him. Wiggins fits her lyrical prose to a distinctly rural, Southern cadence, easily blending the vernacular with luminous imagery, adding bits of poetry, passages explaining scientific phenomena, interpolations about the Scopes trial and even references to Moby-Dick, which serves as a leitmotif. By the time she brings the narrative full circle in a masterful and moving plot twist, she has succeeded in creating "literature as an ongoing exploration of the human tragedy-man's condition." Wiggins comes into her own with this novel, her best book to date. Agent, Henry Dunow. (June 11) Forecast: Higgins's last big success was with John Dollar, in 1989. This new novel has the potential to eclipse it, so long as it gets the review coverage it deserves. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal