Following her husband's unexpected death, Elizabeth Alexander in The Light of the World finds herself at a crossroads in her life. Alexander uses her lyrical sensibility to write a love story that is also a story of loss in a rich and clear manner. Alexander universalises a very personal search for acceptance and meaning in the wake of loss as she considers the joys of her married life, the agony caused by her husband's passing, and the comfort she finds in raising her two teenage boys.