PRAISE “Intricately detailed West Coast settings and a supple range of characters…. Readers will appreciate the author's dexterity with imperfect intimacies and untidy emotions.” — Publishers Weekly “Crittenden's style of writing, deep and penetrating, is honestly stark … but the protagonists' revelations—or lack thereof—are what make these stories so poignantly appealing to all who are interested in contemporary human drama. This debut collection is likely to haunt readers' thoughts for a long, long time.” — ForeWord “Crittenden has an eye for what makes siblings one flesh and bone, for the pulse and rhythms that keep them together no matter what life has brought about to separate them.” — Booklist “Crittenden's beautiful debut reminds us that lurking right beneath the implacable routines and best-laid plans of all of us are ghosts and stubborn memories, the dead and the longed-for. In the end, though, it is the heart's best reasons that triumph. This reader rises at the end and goes forth with a wise bliss.” — Katherine Vaz, author of Fado & Other Stories “Here is a wonderfully lyric short story writer, who gives a new twist to the possibilities of the genre.” — Alan Williamson, author of The Muse of Distance and Westernness: A Meditation