Blue Light

In a brilliant departure for Walter Mosley, author of the bestselling Easy Rawlins mystery series, Blue Light imagines a world in which human potential is suddenly, amazingly fulfilled--a change that calls into question the meaning of human differences and the ultimate purpose and fate of the human race.

For an unknown point in the universe, an inscrutable blue light approaches our solar system. When it reaches Earth, it transforms those it strikes, causing them instantaneously to evolve beyond the present state of humanity. Each person imbued with the light becomes the full realization of his or her nature and potential, with strengths, understanding, and communication abilities far beyond our imagining.

Blue Light is the story of these people and their transformation. Narrated by Chance, a biracial man whose entire life has been a struggle fore self-definition, the novel traces the desperate conflict of the "Blues" with one of their own, a man who--struck by the light at the moment he expired--has become the living embodiment of death. Written as a kind of gospel in which Chance describes the wanderings of this tribe and their ultimate, apocalyptic battle, the account is also full of his uncertainties--about his own place in this strange new world and about whether he may be recording the beginning of the end of the human race.

Blue Light explores questions about identity, race, and humanity--the hallmarks of Walter Mosley's fiction--but with a mind-stretching new framework. Written as the prelude to a projected trilogy, Blue Light is imaginative fiction of the highest caliber from one of the most adventurous thinkers and accomplished novelists at work today.