PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksDeftly captures what it feels like to grow up in the heartland if you don’t feel that you belong ... Mirroring its small-town setting, the writing itself is kind of kooky—sometimes scripted, ever so slightly earnest, and often defying belief—but for the most part, it avoids the saccharine and the sentimental ...
Woodworking doesn’t offer easy lessons. Ugliness and hate rub shoulders with glimpses of freedom, growth, and transformation. Like St. James, I believe in the magic of television, films, and books to transform hearts, and I hope that for readers, her authentic, though fictional, stories might create a little space to counter the lies of those currently in power. It may be that I’m investing too much in the wish-fulfillment aspects of the novel, but it comforts me that South Dakota is able to produce people who are not Kristi Noem and are, instead, Emily St. James.
