Disclosure: An electronic copy of this book was provided in exchange for review by publishers BHC Press, via Library Thing.

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Scott Neuffer’s ”Range of Light” is a beautifully-written book that loses points for an abrupt and somewhat obscure ending.

The reader is aware that this is not going to be light reading, via the cover blurb which says “Three strangers meet on Yosemite’s Mist Trail. By day’s end, two will be dead.” How these folks got to that trail, and what kinds of baggage they are carrying with them, forms the bulk of the book.

These are intricately-wrought character studies, interspersed with original metaphors of the landscape around them. Backstories of the three are rife with symbolism and foreshadowing. Even the character names – Stone, Wasser (water) and Huo Li (energy) are making statements, as is the frequent recurrence of light, lightning, sparks, or sparkles in the text and descriptions.

But ultimately, all this terrific prose never quite coalesces into a coherent story. Each of the three main characters – Stamer Stone, Dorle Wasser, and Chinese national Huo Li – is fleeing trauma, disappointment, and violence revealed a small piece at a time in the frequent backstory sections. Stone writes in his journal “I have this feeling I have to find something or understand something before it’s too late;” Wasser wonders “if other people go around … trying to fill holes in their being with memories and stories.” Yet we never really understand what drew each of them to Yosemite in their separate searches for resolution.

Neuffer has great chops, serving up paragraphs like this one as he describes the swarms of Yosemite visitors: “They congregate on the bridge beneath the falls, thousands of people every day. They’re from different countries, different races, but all one species bound by their desire to climb and break through the mist. The river runs as a revelation through their lives. It shows the long, sinuous dispersions of the past, the surge and swirl of present anxieties, and the future cascading down upon them with more force and determination than they’d care to admit. Their choices, the choices they make in their lives, are like stepping stones across the water: bridges they build and cling to. While some will make it to the lighted peaks beyond, others will disappear in the whirlpools of time.”

Passages like this make “Range of Light” a very worthwhile read. But don’t look for a neat resolution where all questions are answered and the single survivor goes forth with a changed soul to find resolution and a new purpose in life. And the curious “Epilogue”, where Neuffer suddenly rings in a heretofore unheard-of reporter who insists that one of the fatalities “became a hero” doesn’t do much to create one. ( )