From the first page, Winslow establishes an uncanny authority and profound tone that belie the book’s debut status. The precision and charm of his language lure us in and soothe us ... He paints a community so tightknit and thorough it becomes easy to forget the people in it don’t exist ... Knot is as complex and endearing a protagonist as Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie. And Winslow is capable of retreating into the quiet of all of his characters’ minds and hearts and sharing the contents with us ... Much of the story is told through dialogue, rich and truthful conversations ... Like Dickens’s, Winslow’s characters are steeped in secrets, but here the reader knows most of them; the reader’s satisfaction doesn’t come from what will unfold, but from how it will.
Characters deal with inflamed emotions, gender and race roles, sexual preferences, addiction and children born out of wedlock—the stuff of the soap operas Knot and friends watch every day on their new televisions. What distinguishes West Mills’ melodrama from episodic TV, however, is the real-life, unglamorous attitudes of ordinary people. Amid their squabbles, they work hard as farmers, cleaners, midwives, teachers and musicians. They eschew happy endings but stick with each other despite their differences. In West Mills exemplifies the timeless adage that it takes a village to raise one another. This is a historical fiction triumph.
The book’s small asides tend to be the ones that give the book its immersive structure: the love of a kind-hearted man for his pet hen; the cutting cruelty of a cold mother; the far-off but nonetheless permanent presence of an older sister living in New York City, running a brothel, and passing for white ... Winslow’s quietly glorious novel is dedicated 'To the reader,' and it engages on a level that’s appropriately intimate. His circle of characters bluster and tussle with each other, and with life’s inescapable ironies, tragedies, and delights. Some get angry with each other, free in the knowledge that their friendship is illimitable; others fight over disagreements that never get resolved, holding on to those disputes as their single, strongest connection.
De’Shawn Charles Winslow’s enchanting debut novel, In West Mills, paints vivid, decades-spanning portraits of the residents of a segregated rural mill town in North Carolina who harbor long-held secrets ... Author Winslow pens layers of complexity in a narrative that is surprising and irresistible at every turn. He bestows upon his readers the gift of decades, following his indelible characters from the early 1940s, when West Mills’ men enlisted to fight in the second World War, through the civil rights movement in the 1960s, when residents read about activists in nearby Greensboro engaging in sit-ins, to more than a decade after the last U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam. In West Mills is a refreshing and arresting book that shines a light on a woman who rebels against society’s strict and unforgiving social norms, despite the costs.
In West Mills is lovingly atmospheric, carrying us off to a tiny fleck on the map, and one that’s exotically unfamiliar to many readers ... In West Mills shines an admiring spotlight on these distinctively American places, speaking with unadorned eloquence to the unvoiced feelings, impulses, and loyalties that bind the town’s residents. For readers both in and beyond the inherited blood-grip of these bonds, the author brings this world alive with blade-sharp fidelity. The sense of the real—and the living undercurrents of rooted kinship—inhabits every page ... Throughout this exceptional novel, Winslow captures the cadences and casual elisions of West Mills’ language. He depicts the town’s essentials with a lean authenticity and vibrant empathy in rhythms subtly calibrated for both eye and ear ... This is an earthbound novel brimming with grit and sincerity, a spare, elegiac portrait of an American subculture that—in its rural expression, at least—will likely soon fade away.
...a fierce, memorable antiheroine ... Winslow is a natural storyteller whose writing is like a mash-up of Zora Neale Hurston and Edward Kelsey Moore, and his characters spark to life, especially Knot, who Winslow magically makes both enraging and endearing. Although at times entire years are glossed over in this short novel, its humor and heart will win over many readers.
...a tender, exuberant, and impressively crafted debut novel ... through more than 40 years of ups and downs, Knot and Otis Lee’s story makes you feel the enduring grace and potential redemption to be found in even the unlikeliest of extended families. Winslow's heroine isn't easy to like. But over time, she reaches into your heart and touches it deeply. So does this book.
...[a] stellar debut ... Knot is a wonderful character, with a stubborn commitment to her own desires. Winslow has a finely tuned ear for the way the people of this small town talk, and his unpretentiously poetic prose goes down like a cool drink of water on a hot day.
