RaveColorado ReviewWhat you have here is a collection of loosely connected stories set in northern Arkansas, full of characters motivated, to a large degree, by their own unscrupulousness. They are hardscrabble, morally questionable, and sometimes even violent people. They are also supremely entertaining. Here’s a writer who understands and exploits the sort of ethical inversion that good fiction demands—an inversion in which misdeeds become fodder for effective storytelling ... The characters are too busy sabotaging themselves, and watching them do so is great fun. The resulting tone is both sardonically comical and mournfully honest, keeping with the Southern Gothic literary tradition from which this collection was born. One of the common factors between these stories is the setting: Arkansas become its own kind of character throughout the course of the book, its presence looming over the characters’ decisions ... The book positions the reader as an outsider, peering into a culture that feels at once foreign and yet oddly familiar. The characters’ capacity for violence is mirrored by the rugged landscape and its lonely grace ... Mitchell is a gifted storyteller who offers glimpses of her characters at their most vulnerable and most vicious. As a result, it’s impossible not to identify with them, and it is even more impossible not to like them. This is a bold and well-crafted debut.
