We Are the Light

In the town of Majestic, a mass shooting at the historic Majestic Theater has killed 18 people, including the wife of the novel's narrator. The entire novel takes the form of letters written by Lucas Goodgame, a high school guidance counselor, to Karl Johnson, his Jungian analyst. Jungian analysis is a form of psychotherapy rooted in the ideas of Carl Jung that emphasizes the unconscious, archetypes, and individuation. Lucas writes 17 letters over eight months following the tragedy, followed by a final 18th letter three years and eight months later. Karl never responds.

Lucas's first letter apologizes for showing up at Karl's consulting room after Karl terminated his analysis. Lucas explains that his psyche, his term for his inner guiding voice, insists Karl needs him. He has been unable to return to work since the tragedy, sitting paralyzed in the school parking lot each day. His boss and friend, Isaiah Henderson, the school principal, and Isaiah's wife, Bess, bring him meals and offer support. Lucas claims his wife, Darcy, was not truly killed but "transformed" into a winged angel who visits him nightly, shedding feathers he collects as proof. A local police officer named Bobby, a former student, warns Lucas to stop knocking on Karl's door or face arrest. The angelic Darcy suggests he write letters instead.

Jill, Darcy's best friend and the owner of a local coffee shop, moves into Lucas's home after the tragedy. She closes her business for a month, accompanies Lucas to 17 funerals, shields him from reporters, and keeps his emotionally manipulative mother at a distance. In May, Jill takes Lucas to coastal Maryland for his and Darcy's 25th wedding anniversary. After drinking heavily, Jill comes to Lucas's hotel room at night. Half-asleep and expecting Darcy, Lucas briefly reciprocates before realizing it is Jill. He screams for her to stop. Lucas tells winged Darcy everything except the brief moment of intercourse, and the secret becomes a source of deep guilt.

Robin Withers, the town librarian whose husband was also killed, organizes a support group for the survivors. Sandra Coyle, a lawyer on the school board whose husband was also killed, gradually redirects the group toward political activism and gun control. When Lucas suggests finishing mourning before taking action, Sandra publicly shames him, and Lucas never returns.

One evening, Jill discovers a glowing orange tent in their backyard. Inside is Eli Hansen, a student Lucas had been counseling before the tragedy. Eli is the younger brother of Jacob Hansen, the shooter. Emaciated and withdrawn, Eli cannot go home and refuses to return to school. That night, winged Darcy tells Lucas, "That boy is the way forward," a phrase she repeats throughout. Lucas sits silently with Eli and eventually brings him inside.

Lucas proposes continuing their counseling outside school and calls Isaiah, who grants full authority over a senior project for Eli's diploma. On a hike, Eli proposes making a feature-length monster movie, and Lucas suggests screening it at the Majestic Theater. They co-write a script called The Majestic Prince of Monsters. The monster is a metaphor for a wounded boy the world treats as monstrous; the father-figure character is based on Lucas; and the analyst character, named Carl with a C, is written for Karl. Eli reveals that his mother physically and psychologically abused both him and Jacob throughout their childhoods.

Lucas pitches the project to the Survivors at the library. Sandra interrupts with a counter-speech, and Eli, overheated in the costume, faints and splits his head on the podium, triggering traumatic memories. At the hospital, Jill insists Lucas must see the movie through because Eli has pinned all his hope on it.

The next morning, Mark and Tony, the couple who own the Majestic Theater and are former film producers, volunteer to produce the film at their own expense. Bobby pledges the police force for filming. Eli's mother arrives screaming accusations, but Bobby intervenes. In a quiet moment, Eli asks Lucas never to tell him what really happened the night his brother died. Lucas's throat closes and he cannot respond. During pre-production table reads, Eli confesses he knew about Jacob's growing gun collection before the shooting and feels responsible for not alerting anyone.

Filming brings the community together, with Survivors taking acting and crew roles and townspeople volunteering. Lucas visits Sandra, who offers him a political consultant job and calls Eli a probable psychopath; Lucas refuses. But as the production progresses, Lucas begins deteriorating. Winged Darcy stops appearing altogether. Eli spends increasing time with Tony, learning filmmaking, and moves in with Mark and Tony for editing. Lucas feels he is disappearing and writes what he believes will be his final letter, admitting he is scared and alone.

The premiere arrives. On stage in the Grand Viewing Room, Lucas looks up at the ceiling painted with angels soaring through clouds. The image triggers the full return of his suppressed memories: Darcy dying in his arms as Jacob executed moviegoers; Lucas tackling Jacob and beating him to death until Bobby pulled him off. Lucas screams, punches himself, and tries to claw his face. He is restrained and taken to a mental health facility for three weeks.

The final letter, written three years and eight months later, reveals the novel's two central concealed truths. Karl has been dead the entire time; his wife, Leandra, was also killed in the shooting, and Karl died by suicide shortly after the funerals. Lucas found the body. Second, winged Darcy was never real. She was Lucas's dissociative response to the trauma of his wife's murder and his killing of Jacob.

Isaiah and Jill bring Lucas home to a yard covered in supportive messages. Jill introduces him to Phineas, a new Jungian analyst who knew Karl, and reveals she has sold her house to pay for three sessions per week. Phineas reframes Lucas's killing of Jacob as the act of a brave inner warrior rather than a crime. The Survivors organize a rotating schedule of activities, from Sunday soccer to Friday pottery, to keep Lucas engaged.

That December, Lucas and Jill visit her warm, loving parents in North Carolina before continuing to Florida, where Lucas's mother remains self-absorbed. Jill confronts her, calling out decades of emotional damage. Afterward, Lucas and Jill sleep together consensually for the first time. They spend Christmas on a beach, writing the names of all 18 victims and Karl in the sand and watching the tide erase them. Jill moves into Lucas's bedroom, and they begin visiting Darcy's grave weekly.

Nearly four years after the tragedy, Eli, now graduating from film school in California, has made a prize-winning short film about Lucas that depicts their time together with warmth and gratitude, never mentioning that Lucas killed Jacob. With Phineas's guidance, Lucas returns to the Majestic Theater, then watches Eli's film alone. Eli video-chats with Lucas for the first time in four years and invites him to his graduation. The Survivors gather to watch their monster movie together. Lucas notes that the projector's light obscures the painted angels on the ceiling and thinks: "We are the light."

Lucas asks Isaiah for his old job back and is immediately rehired. On the plane to Eli's graduation, surrounded by Survivors, he composes his final letter to Karl. He carries an engagement ring for Jill and plans to imagine winged Darcy one last time, ask her permission to marry Jill, and then let her go.