Author Description

Part 1 of 2. Mary fears she’s losing the two people she most admires—her lover and her father—after she’s lost her reputation. She regains them with the publication of Frankenstein. As Scott is crafting his biography of the Shelleys and Godwins a century later, he fears that he’s losing his audience and his wife. He regains them with the publication of his other “work” he’s authoring at the same—The Great Gatsby. As eternal celebrities of Western culture—the Shelleys, the Godwins, and the Fitzgeralds—their brief victories are dramatically retold in What Light Was as dialogues, verse, and meditations. In similar struggles a century after Scott’s “Great American Novel”—as the ambitions of Romanticism are put on trial in these living love letters—we will find that it is not easy being the children of these dreamers and their illusory masterpieces. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ “Trenchant and insightful... observations about ghost stories, inspiration, poetry, and being an expatriate are incisive... soars through lines of jazzy musicality... lofty and intellectual, shining new light on their canonical stories.” —Foreword Clarion Review “The intersection of Shelley and Fitzgerald allows unexpected emotional ways we view them... an alternative point of view wherein their famed pieces act as cryptographs for the partnerships they could not be without. Hays harnesses literary power by connecting them through the volatility of their marriages.” —Jamie Michele, author, Readers’ Favorite “The couples are in turmoil from the tests of time and society. Affairs, lies, deceit, passion, and losses... the narrative was profound and magical and the characters were interesting. There was never a moment when I felt disconnected from the story or felt the characters were out of touch. Parallel in passion and well-matched in talent... it reflects thei