RaveThe New York Times Book Review\"Maren is masterly at describing America’s modern wastelands, the blasted towns not yet and maybe never-to-be the beneficiaries of rehabilitation and reoccupation ... In searching for answers to those questions, resolutions to those conflicts, the book’s conclusion perhaps misses an opportunity when it veers toward action and violence and away from one of its greatest strengths — its clear focus on character and place. But that doesn’t diminish the cumulative effect of the graceful prose, which reaches back in the best way to its noir predecessors. You can almost see Maren — like Raymond Chandler — cutting each typed page into three strips and requiring each strip to contain something delightful (startling simile, clever dialogue, brilliant description) offered to the reader as recompense for a world that presses up against you all raw and aggressive and dangerous.\
