RavePheobe JournalThese stories are wonderfully varied, with settings like a life-sized Titanic replica to an Alcatraz tour. In each piece, Evans contends with grief, loss, race, and the sometimes-echoing, sometimes-shattering effects of the past, though \'collection\' oversimplifies the care and craft evidenced within these pages ... Here’s the real power nestled within the pages of this collection: many of the characters from its all-woman cast, like Cassie, will stay with you even after you’ve moved to the next story, and the next ... Each woman springs off the page and into the mind with subtle ease, belying the craft of creation and eluding fiction’s artifice. Master musicians and writers share this, at least—making the difficult seem effortless ... What follows is an exploration of the modern American psyche (appropriately prefaced with a James Baldwin quote) as endearing and humor-filled as it is disturbing and horrifyingly inevitable ... With such placement, this story is asked to bear the weight of the title, to hold the other stories that have come before within itself. It does not disappoint ... Evans’ collection is more than an assemblage of stories; it is a rich, nuanced, and fluid display of writerly range and precision of language.
