The Dance of Light and Shadow
Synopsis of The Dance of Light and Shadow:
As the title suggests, The Dance of Light and Shadow is a novel in light and shade, moving from the first person in Part One to third person in Part Two, as the main character, Xander Holiday, a writer living alone in a small apartment, pulls the reader not only into his life, but also into the novel that he’s writing, which becomes the focus of Part Two. The reader is continually pulled from Xander’s life into his novel and then back into his life, so that the reader must wonder what is real and what is fiction, what is light and what is shadow, as in the extreme contrasts between light and dark in a Caravaggio painting.
In Part Three, Xander becomes involved with the woman who lives upstairs, a relationship that ends disastrously, and sheds a new light on Xander himself. Part Four pulls the reader back into Xander’s novel, wherein the reader learns of the ruthlessness of the main character in Xander’s novel, Dunbar Hollingsworth, when he orders the killing of his wife, Rebecca, who has fallen in love with Tomas, a priest. Questioning his faith, Tomas chooses to leave the priesthood, and professes his love to Rebecca, just before Rebecca is violently murdered. In a state of grief and from a desire to revenge Rebecca’s death, Tomas attempts to kill Dunbar in Dunbar’s home, only to be killed by Dunbar in self-defense.
Finally, in Part Five, Xander is pulled into the action of his own novel, so the reader is left not only to question what is real and what is fiction, but who was really behind the killings of Rebecca, Baker Karlsson (Dunbar’s assistant and lover), Dunbar, and even Xander himself.