Editorial Content for We Burned So Bright

TJ Klune, the bestselling author of THE HOUSE ON THE CERULEAN SEA and UNDER THE WHISPERING DOOR, returns with WE BURNED SO BRIGHT, a stand-alone novella set at the end of the world. No, really.

When Don and Rodney met 40 years ago, they knew almost instantly that they had no idea what they wanted to do or where they wanted to live. But they knew they wanted each other. The world was not kind to love stories like theirs at the time, but they weathered it all: Stonewall and the AIDS crisis, the start of the LGBT movement, the reclamation of the word “queer,” and eventually marriage and even parenthood.

But now, at 72 and 78, Don and Rodney are facing something entirely new: the literal end of the world. Discovered two years ago, a massive black hole has been moving steadily toward Earth (though the government only decided to let its constituents know a year later), and now the time has come. Within one month, Earth as they know it will be swallowed up, either to perdition or to absolution. Don, Rodney and everyone they know (and everyone they don’t know) will go with it. 

"TJ Klune’s novel is a galvanizing, hopeful reminder that while we may not survive the end, it always will be worth it to live, trust, communicate and grow.... Achingly beautiful and earnestly melancholy, WE BURNED SO BRIGHT is not just a book, but an antidote --- and Klune is its generous, gracious provider."

If you’ve lived through any of our own recent crises, you can guess how the public responds. Military vehicles have taken up residence in major cities, ostensibly to stop the looting and rioting. But no one knows why. In Arizona, a group of people have doused themselves with gasoline, leaving the world behind on their own terms. In Nebraska, 34 people attempted to storm the capitol, leaving 10 of them injured and six dead. In Paris, massive crowds have broken into storefronts, taking everything that wasn’t bolted down. In Cape Town, Chengdu and Denmark, people are walking into the ocean to drown, leaping from the tops of skyscrapers to their deaths, and self-immolating. So it’s business as usual as far as global catastrophes are concerned.

In Maine, where Don and Rodney have lived in a quaint little cottage for 30 years, the tragedy has taken a more stoic route. In their community of older couples and retirees, life already has slowed to a more manageable pace. People have begun to appreciate the world around them, the one they could never enjoy due to work, families, children, deadlines, bills and so on. With that appreciation has come nostalgia and its bitter twin: regret.

Now, with only 30 days left, Don and Rodney must find a way to fix things with their son. To do so will require a cross-country trip in an old RV, but it also will require honesty, reconciliation and accountability…plus a map. You see, with the black hole steadily approaching Earth’s atmosphere, cellular and electric infrastructures have started to fail. Every trip out of your own neighborhood could be your last unless you truly know where you’re going. Add to that the fact that many gas stations have begun to close, police are either too hands-on or completely absent, and civilians are either enjoying a final bacchanal or fighting death with guns and bullets, and you have the makings of a completely ill-advised and perilous road trip. Just the thing for two septuagenarians making amends, right?

As Don and Rodney journey out of Maine and across Ohio, through South Dakota and all the way to Washington, they encounter every variety of end-of-the-world revelry. First, they meet a couple traveling with their two children on the “trip of a lifetime,” without telling the kids that they are heading for their deaths. While the husband maintains a brave facade, he admits to the men that he will kill his family if necessary, if only to prevent their suffering. Further on, they stumble upon a gathering of hippies with wine and weed, for whom they perform a marriage. They refuse to allow these twenty-somethings to miss out on the joy that their own marriage has been for so long, even if it will last for only days or weeks. And soon after, they encounter a deranged girl dealing with the apocalypse in the most humane way she knows how, but whose adherence to her mission terrifies them.

All the while, Don and Rodney collect stories, hear perspectives, and cautiously turn on the radio for reports of losses: not just of people and cities, but of entire planets. As the very sky above them begins to warp and bend with colors and light, the reality of their demise becomes unavoidable. For the first time, they must reckon with their determination to reconcile with their son…and the very real possibility that they might not make it in time.

With this realization comes acceptance and then truth. As they unpack the story of their own marriage and journey to parenthood, a painful history emerges that adds serious weight to their final mission. Gifted with the wisdom and perspective of age, their musings on their pasts, regrets and memories are poignant and earth-shattering, yet deceptively accessible and simply worded. Unlike the young men and women raging and partying at the end of the world, Don and Rodney’s grief --- at surviving the AIDS crisis, at failing as parents, at the black hole hurtling toward them --- doesn’t need to be screamed, shouted or even cried. Instead, it exists in their stories and in their love.

WE BURNED SO BRIGHT is a startling and tender depiction of grief, love, and all the big, universal feelings that tie us together. As the hippie groom whose wedding Rodney officiates in Ohio remarks, “Each of us has this energy, coded deep within us, something from the universe, like a little fire being lit. Some burn brighter than others, but that’s the way of things.” When it is revealed to Don and Rodney, they begin their own philosophical journey to ask, “Why are we really here, and what does it matter?” The answer, in the end, is “To have these random moments of collision, to learn from each other, to hear stories….To live.”

In a world burdened by endless crises and headlines that announce the end of the world as we know it in one way or another, TJ Klune’s novel is a galvanizing, hopeful reminder that while we may not survive the end, it always will be worth it to live, trust, communicate and grow. To mirror the book’s title, we must burn as bright as we can, so bright that no black hole can swallow us all. Achingly beautiful and earnestly melancholy, WE BURNED SO BRIGHT is not just a book, but an antidote --- and Klune is its generous, gracious provider.