Excerpt from The Invention of Fire by Bruce Holsinger, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

A gongfarmer's pay was good enough, sure and certain, but one false step and he could be sucked right under, or release a pocket of devil's air that would ignite and turn him into one of these lanterns, sizzling hair and all. Alan knew more than a few gongers who'd fallen to their deaths or close to it in these narrow depths. Why, just upstream from here, old Purvis crashed through the seat of a public latrine like the one over Alan's head right now, poor gonger was rat food by the time they found him, a chewed mess of—Then he saw it. A hand, pale and alone in the lamplight, streaked with brown and standing out against the solid mound of dung behind it.

"By Judas!" Alan Pike swore, and would have fallen backwards had the thick flow not braced him.

"Father?" Tom's worried voice came from behind.

Alan looked again. The hand was not severed, as he'd first feared. No, the hand was attached to an arm, and the arm was attached to another arm, looked like, and that arm, why, that arm was sprouting from a leg—no no no, from a head, but that was impossible, so then what in—It bloomed in Alan Pike then, just what he was seeing. This was no pile of gong blocking the Walbrook, nor no horse neither. Why, this was—"

Father, what is it then?"

Tom, beside him now, peering ahead with that boy's curiosity he had about most everything in the world. Alan heaved an arm, wanting to cover his son's eyes against the devilish sight, but Tom pushed it aside and grasped the lamp and Alan let it go, a slow, reluctant loos- ing as the oily handle slipped from his grasp and then he felt Tom's smaller, smoother hand against his own. Slick clasp of love, last touch of innocence.

They stared together, father and son, at this mound of ruined men. No words could come.

Chapter 1

WHAT USE IS a blind man in the face of the world's calamities? Turn to Scripture and you will quickly learn that the blind are Pharisees and fools, sorcerers and unbelievers. The Syrian army blinded at the behest of Elijah (2 Kings 16). The blind and the lame banished from David's house (2 Samuel 5). Horses smitten with blindness (Zachariah 12). More often the blind are mere figures of speech, emblems of ignorance and lack of faith. The blind leading the blind (Matthew 15:14). The eyes of the blind, opened through the grace of the Lord (Psalm 146:8). The hand of the Lord rests upon thee, and thou shalt be blinded (Acts 13:11). Our proverbs, too, reek with the faults of the blind. Blind as a mole. Oh, how blind are the counsels of the wicked! Man is ever blind to his own faults, but fox-quick at perceiving those of others.

Blind blinded blinding blindness blind. What did the men who wrote such things know of blindness? What can I know? For I am not blind, not just yet, though I am well on my way. If the final dark of unsight is a dungeon in a dale I am halfway down the hill, my steps toward that lasting shadow lengthening with each passing week even as my soul shrinks against that fuller affliction to come.

Yet this creeping blindness itself is not the worst of it. Far worse is the swelling of desire. As my sight wanes, my lust for the visible world surges, a boiling pot just before the water is cast to the dirt. Dusted arcs of sunlight in the vaults of St. Paul's, crimson slick of a spring lamb's offal puddled on the wharf, fine-etched ivory of a young nun's face, prickle of stars splayed on the night. Color, form, symmetry, beauty, radiance, glow. All fading now, like the half-remembered faces of the departed: my sisters, my children, my well-beloved wife. All soon enough gone, this sweet sweet world of sight.

There are some small compensations. Sin is to human nature what blindness is to the eye, the blessed St. Augustine writes, and as the light dims, as crisp lines blur, I find I am discovering a renewed fondness for the weighty sensuality of sin and its vehicles. The caterpillar fuzz of parchment on the thumb. A thin knife slipped beneath the wax. The gentle pip of a broken seal. A man's secrets opened to my nose, whole worlds of sin spread out like so many blooming flowers in a field, scent so heavy you can chew it. I have a sweet tooth for vice, and it sharpens with age.

Excerpted from The Invention of Fire by Bruce Holsinger. Copyright © 2015 by Bruce Holsinger. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.