Evidence of Things Unseen (Wiggins)

Book Reviews
There is roughness in Evidence of Things Unseen, an occasional grandiloquent reach beyond its fictional grasp. Rarely, you sense Wiggins spurring her story to lift it to the next stage, or chivying a sentence to snare a sublimity. This time, though, she has schooled her winged horse to transport human riders.
Richard Eder - New York Times Book Review

This nice little story would be quite sufficient for a delightful reading experience, but Wiggins has a more ambitious agenda. Foster's name (Ray, as in X-ray) is a not-too-subtle clue that he will have some symbolic role to play, and sure enough he functions as a modern mythic figure in the final third of the book, when the science that enthralled him becomes his nemesis.
Charles Platt - Washington Post

Hideous tragedies are nothing new in Wiggins' work; her warm portrait of abiding love embedded in marriage is the real surprise. Brilliantly charting the shifting currents of Fos and Opal's relationship over two decades, Wiggins gradually leads us to the understanding that while, for Fos, his wife is enough, Opal can't be entirely happy without the baby they have failed to conceive—and her husband knows it. With this poignant, realistic portrait of two people who love one another deeply but not equally, Wiggins may have tapped a vein of common humanity that will bring Evidence of Things Unseen a wider audience than her earlier work.
Wendy Smith - Los Angeles Times

Redoubtable Wiggins, always fearless in choosing subjects for her work (John Dollar; Almost Heaven) here tells the story of the atomic bomb through the eyes of one average Joe, amateur chemist Ray Foster, or "Fos," of Kitty Hawk, N.C. His fascination with "the kinds of lights nature can produce, the ones not always visible to man," serves him well in lighting the trenches during the Great War in France. When it is over, fellow soldier "Flash" Handy invites Fos to help him start a photography studio in Knoxville, Tenn. In a fated moment, Fos falls in love with a glassblower's daughter, the unflappable and luminescent Opal; they marry, and Opal helps run the studio. Meanwhile, Flash turns out to be a man with many secrets, one so tragic that it separates him permanently from Fos and Opal. Their sorrow at Flash's fate is somewhat forgotten when, after years of infertility, they are granted a baby, named Lightfoot. They move to land Opal inherits in rural Tennessee, but after it is claimed by the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1942, Fos finds a job in Oak Ridge with a government lab that, unbeknownst to him, is on deadline to create the atomic bomb that will be dropped on Hiroshima. In response to that horrific event and other heartache, the Fosters do something desperate that only serves to betray their nine-year-old son. Lightfoot proves to be more courageous and determined than Fos or Opal ever were, and finally finds the only person left in the world who can help him. Wiggins fits her lyrical prose to a distinctly rural, Southern cadence, easily blending the vernacular with luminous imagery, adding bits of poetry, passages explaining scientific phenomena, interpolations about the Scopes trial and even references to Moby-Dick, which serves as a leitmotif. By the time she brings the narrative full circle in a masterful and moving plot twist, she has succeeded in creating "literature as an ongoing exploration of the human tragedy-man's condition." Wiggins comes into her own with this novel, her best book to date. Higgins's last big success was with John Dollar, in 1989. This new novel has the potential to eclipse it, so long as it gets the review coverage it deserves
Publishers Weekly

Wiggins (Almost Heaven) here links her themes with those of Melville's Moby-Dick. The elusive white whale of this book is nothing less than the building blocks of existence, and the obsessed seeker is a believer in the promises of modern science. World War I veteran, longtime bachelor, and quintessential common man Ray "Fos" Foster meets Opal, the love of his life, during his annual journey to North Carolina's Outer Banks to observe the August meteor showers. They marry, and the intelligent but inexperienced young wife is soon deeply involved with both the Knoxville photography business Fos runs with a quirky, doomed Army pal and with Fos's dreams of scientific discoveries. Opal joins Fos in exhibiting his X-ray machine at county fairs, demonstrating modern technology to skeptical crowds by irradiating Opal's foot. Fos's reputation as a knowledgeable amateur gains him employment with the Tennessee Valley Authority-which eventually claims Opal's inherited farm for a dam, evicting the couple and their young son. In the early 1940s another, better opportunity seems to fulfill the family's faith in both scientific progress and the American dream: a good job and comfortable housing at Site X, a.k.a. Oak Ridge, TN. But when Opal falls mysteriously ill, the hideous, unintended consequences of Fos's well-meaning quest overtake and batter two generations. Strong characters, vivid settings, and extreme situations are described in masterly prose; this is another tour de force from a first-class literary novelist. Recommended for most fiction collections. —Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA
Library Journal

A comprehensive love story stretches from the birth of X-rays to the detonation of the first nuclear weapons, and links it all with rural America between the wars. Ray Foster carries X-ray equipment in his truck and has "Phenomenologist" painted on the side. His experience runs the gamut of the expressions of war and the insidious technology of it; he was gassed by Germans in WWI, and is fascinated by all things headed toward atomic reaction, from firecrackers on up. Back in the States he becomes known as a photographer, but before long meets Opal, who can talk to him about nihilism, and explain what a "glory hole" is: the hottest part of a glassblower’s furnace. The two have chemistry, quite literally: "I like it when you talk your science stuff," Opal says. The newlyweds are soon off on the adventure of their marriage, first a return to Ray’s Knoxville, then to a farm Opal inherits. Their travels take them through a convenient tour of contemporary science: moonshiners, accidental electrocutions, Clarence Darrow arguing for Evolution, the Office of Rural Electrification, where Ray eventually comes to work. When a friend dies, a votive candle isn’t enough for these two: they toss a chunk of phosphorous into water to watch the light sink away. It’s an absence of chemistry that keeps Ray and Opal from starting a family of their own, but before long they happen upon a foundling they name Lightfoot. At her best, Wiggins (John Dollar, 1988; Eveless Eden, 1995, etc.) here belongs in the company of Eudora Welty. Still, the connection between modern science and Ray and Opal’s landscape can seem strained—"Like the Big Dipper, which has seven identifiable stars, the Tennessee pours through seven states"—and where would this story go if not to the tragedy of radiation poisoning for one of its principals? Still, the author brings these characters to life even as Ray (as in ray of light) and Opal (opalescence) begin to seem overtly apocryphal.
Kirkus Reviews