From Powells.com
Our favorite books of the year.
Synopses & Reviews
With intensity, dark humor, and emotional precision, Kirstin Valdez Quade's unforgettable stories plunge us into the fierce, troubled hearts of characters torn between their desires to escape the past and to plumb its depths. The deadbeat father of a pregnant teenager tries to transform his life by playing the role of Jesus in a bloody penitential Passion. A young man discovers that his estranged father and a boa constrictor have been squatting in his grandmother's empty house. A young woman finds herself at an impasse when she is asked to hear her priest's confession.
Review
"A story writer of searing vision." Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Review
"A book of extraordinary virtuosity." Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
Review
"Quade's ability to depict an entire world within the limitations of a single story is reminiscent of Alice Munro... the final story ...is an emotional tour de force." Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
Set in northern New Mexico, an astonishing, beautifully rendered debut about growing up in a land shaped by love, loss and violence.
About the Author
Kirstin Valdez Quade has received a "5 Under 35" award from the National Book Foundation as well as the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and the 2013 Narrative Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Narrative, The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University and is currently the Nicholas Delbanco Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan.