The least political of his novels, Children of Light lacks the complexity and depth of Stone's narrative style.

However, the interaction between Walker and Lu Anne provides a level of intensity that remains consistent throughout the development of the novel. Discussing the origins of the novel, Stone replied to one interviewer that he intended the focus to be on the relationship between two people "who know that nothing good can happen to them from each other and who know that they have nothing but trouble and even potential destruction to give to each other but who willfully — and one of them more willfully than the other — out of nostalgia, out of weakness, out of perversity, out of a desire for generalized destruction, make this pilgrimage."

1. What distinguishes Children of Light from Stone's previous novels is that there are only two principal characters and relatively...