The freak occurrence quickly becomes legend throughout the community. It is said to be the cause of cars spinning off the road, televisions transmitting stations from far-flung cities, battery-operated appliances malfunctioning. One resident, Lacey Mills, tells the local reporter: "Out in the field I saw four people walking—except that they looked smaller somehow than normal people, and so thin you'd think they would blow away." The fact that the newcomer Frances is so disinterested in the cosmic event that occurred in her backyard—refusing to see it as an act of God or space aliens—makes her an object of suspicion among her neighbors. So much for laying low.
Though Frances is the protagonist, Goodyear alternates points of view and weaves an engaging tale of conflicting desires. For a local reporter and the town inspector, the mysterious occurrence is an opportunity to put themselves and Faith on the map. For merchants, it offers the chance to become another Roswell, New Mexico, with all the ensuing tourist dollars. For Lacey, and many others in the town, the bright green light not only offers the thrill of the supernatural, but also some well-needed attention. The lonely Lacey discovers that neighbors who once ignored her now stop and talk. "People wanted to hear what she had to say. Most of them had felt something themselves the night the light came, or thought they might have."
This simple human desire to believe is at the heart of the novel, and it is underscored by Goodyear's elegant and stark portrait of winter in Maine. Here she describes Frances trudging to a neighbor's house while snowflakes sting her face: "The shortest day of the year was still seven weeks away, but dark already came before five in the afternoon. On days like this one, full of clouds and portentous winds from the north, night's vanguard started rolling in at about 3 p.m., mowing over the visual landmarks that had given Frances comfort earlier in the fall: the Mercers' old barn on the ridge; the thick oak down by the road; ... the trashed school bus over by the pig farm. The impending winter did open up the landscape, in a way. There was nothing between her place and Denise's anymore."
Although Frances is not among the believers, this is not a story of the urban sophisticate clashing with rural simpletons. Frances was, after all, fired for making up stories. And Frances is caught in her own fictions—not fully living her life but instead standing outside of it as she shoots a rifle with her pothead boyfriend or quizzes a local eccentric about his orgone accumulator, a machine that harness the power of orgasms. "[They were] characters in a story that was not of her own devising, to be sure, but that she was still fashioning in her mind as it played out. A story she should could tell to some other people later, some real people back in her real life."
Goodyear beautifully captures what is perhaps the most enticing and ultimately devastating part of the escape fantasy—the idea that you could become someone else for a while and dip into a life that is not yours, where your actions don't have consequences because it's not really you doing them. In real life, of course, this rarely works out. Maybe that's why we have books.