RaveThe Southern Review of BooksTo describe Milk Blood Heat, a new collection of stories by Dantiel W. Moniz, as elemental is to summon the chemical definition of the term, to invite the reader to imagine an elixir that acts on the spirit as well as the body ... In these challenging stories by Moniz, each character is altered by basics — death, birth, desire. Enthralling in simplicity and grounding in the details of her reality, Milk Blood Heat is kin to We the Animals by Justin Torres. Like Torres, Moniz’s settings are based in concrete detail and her stories open questions about human nature. Set in a steamy Florida, each of the eleven stories offers the reader a full immersion into one world after another. Each storyline is a surprise. You may need to sit back with eyes closed after each narrative to recover before diving in again. The characters’ journeys of transformation are always unexpected ... Moniz has created an alchemy that converts base literary elements into a transformative elixir of the reading experience.
