Derelict Light

Mike Stark is a longtime journalist and author. His previous books include Chasing the Ghost Bear: On the Trail of America’s Lost Super Beast (Bison Books, 2022), winner of the 2023 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, and Wrecked in Yellowstone: Greed, Obsession, and the Untold Story of Yellowstone’s Most Infamous Shipwreck. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

“A captivating and gripping novel. . . . Stark skillfully reveals the everyday working life of the people in this desolate land where even the river turns treacherous on a whim. He writes with precise clarity and a storyteller’s brilliance. The Derelict Light is one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time.”-Milana Marsenich, Roundup Magazine “The Derelict Light belongs to the tradition of John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath, and the American proletarian novels of the 1930s, in highlighting the intersections among work, migration, and politics. Mike Stark does a fine job of creating the world of 1920s Astoria, firmly planting the reader’s feet in the muddy streets. He adds unique and needed detail to our nation’s ongoing conversation about its core principles. An impressive novel.”-Tracy Daugherty, author of 148 Charles Street and Snow and Straw “Mike Stark takes us a century into the past in this gripping tale set around the 1922 Astoria fire. The Derelict Light depicts a community in conflict with the era’s prominent leftists-Wobblies and Finnish socialists-organizing to build a better future, and the notorious Klan scheming to further oppress those on society’s margins. The brutal realities of Northwest working-class life jump off the pages of The Derelict Light. Few books, fiction or nonfiction, so ably capture the everyday experiences of working people who lived in this gray, rainy land. Stark deserves praise for penning this captivating novel. A must-read book for anyone with an interest in Northwest history.”-Aaron Goings, author of The Port of Missing Men: Billy Gohl, Labor, and Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest “Readers will also come to understand that the town of Astoria is more than a setting in The Derelict Light. It is one of the main characters of the book itself, beckoning, suffering, and, ultimately reinventing itself.”-Susan Bucci Mockler, New York Journal of Books