Patrick Stockwell’s The Light Here Changes Everything is the mesmerizing story of Sophie’s against-her-will attempt to throw open the blinds on her life. An in-recovery alcoholic, Sophie finds that after reaching one year of sobriety, the most important relationships in her life—with her hard-nosed AA sponsor, her problematic boyfriend, her dead father, and her sober and un-sober selves—flicker with shadows that are darker and deeper than she suspected. This is a powerful and emotionally layered debut from a writer with tremendous talent, patience, and grace. —Joseph Scapellato, author of The Made-Up Man and Big Lonesome
"Every good story is a coming-of-age story; Patrick Stockwell's The Light Here Changes Everything is no exception. Adulthood means abandoning certain romantic notions, and Sophie's entrenchment in a kind of western wild glamour— replete with bar brawls, road trips, guns and booze -- shifts in the course of this utterly engaging novella. This character is funny and flawed and working hard at redemption in the lustrous harsh light of the real, rather than nostalgic, American west." —Antonya Nelson, author of Funny Once and Bound
"Patrick Stockwell is a writer who knows how to tell a story. In The Light Here Changes Everything, he explores the powerful influence of personal relationships alongside the seductive dread of addiction. This is a story about trespass, about those who trespass against us, and how readily we trespass against ourselves. Stockwell’s writing is crisp, infused by a satisfying forward momentum, and punctuated by moments of elevated light." —Kurt Caswell, author of Laika's Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog
"Gorgeous, patient and electric. This is the kind of work that restructures the reader at the atomic level. Sophie finds herself on someone else's daffy pilgrimage, but damn it if she doesn't find what she didn't know she was looking for. Reminds you that self-destruction is the bastard cousin of self-creation." —David MacLean, author of The Answer to the Riddle is Me
"Patrick Stockwell’s novella, The Light Here Changes Everything, is a journey from Texas to Arizona in the tradition of a good, old fashioned American road trip. But, Stockwell powerfully challenges the form. While John Steinbeck might go on a similar journey for 400-some pages or Jack Kerouac for 300, Stockwell uses only 69, and in this way, Stockwell’s road trip, dysfunctional and moving, is an update to these classics."
—Tyler Truman Julian in Puerto Del Sol
"The Light Here Changes Everything by Patrick Stockwell is a contemplative novella that digs deep beneath the surface of addiction and explores one woman’s internal and external conflicts with her forced sobriety after yet another DUI."
—Ruthie Jones in Lone Star Literary