I was fascinated by the play of light and dark in this luminous novel about a young woman dealing with a personal atrocity to which she was both a witness and victim. This novel is layered and the deeper one looks into the meaning of this germinal work, the more light that is shed upon it. The protagonist, Weeble, is a runner who seeks to fortify herself through fitness training from the worst possible, recurring reinactments in her mind of an atrocity. She runs, bikes and swims in circles but the training leaves her physically stronger, helps to vent the nightmares and ultimately leads her to Tom Paul, a sculptor who works in glass and seeks to build a work of cast glass entitled the "Illuminated Soul." As Weeble is an engineer, she offers to help Tom Paul light his "Illuminated Soul." Tom Paul is a sensitive and fit man of the fine arts, a dumpster diver who seeks to rescue spare parts and discarded pieces to give new life to them. His role is no less as he struggles with Weeble -- named after a durable Playskool toy that wobbles but doesn't fall apart -- to put back together the brittle aspects of her life so that the horrific nightmares cease. Tom Paul's name itself is symbolic of a Biblical battle between doubt and deep faith. Nietzsche in "The Birth of Tragedy" attributes the battle of Appollo, the Greek God of Light and Order, against Dionysius, the God of Darkness and Chaos as the source of tragedy. So it is that in "St. Sebastian's Head" the interplay of light and darkness affords a largely tennebrous effect -- extremes of light and dark in the interplay with a narrative style that effectively switches, often abruptly, in the exposition between radiantly bright light and stark, disturbing darkness. The story line is engaging and ultimately gripping in a crescendo involving the torso of the nearly martyred St. Sebastian rescued by a caring woman from his martyrdom after being wounded from arrows. The symbolic sense in the storyline about the brittle, sensitive art of scuplting with glass and the risks associated with heat, time, talent and patience will not be lost to sensitive readers of this wonderful book. While we do not have a free will about much of the tragedy which intrudes upon everyday life, this novel closely examines how we are free to react and strive to recover from it: this novel is an important story about a heroic path to recovery from tragedy. "St. Sebastian's Head" is a keeper and will be especially valued by those who have had to deal with incredible hardship, violation and personal loss. I recommend this powerful, gripping, well crafted and enlightened novel. ( )