Part interrogation, part dramatic monologue, Life/Insurance grapples with our biggest fears: meaning-making and uncertainty. How do you prove your worth when the values of others run counter to yours? What is a life worth to those living it versus the family members, critics, and claims adjusters who see things differently? A collage-like meditation on creativity, Life/Insurance raises questions about authenticity, intimacy, and identity. Deal builds an intricate and suspenseful mystery via a narrator who believes one has to break form--and oneself--to achieve. --Margaret Luongo, author of HISTORY OF ART: STORIES

Tara Deal's Life Insurance is a masterful puzzle, a one-way conversation that poses more questions than it answers as a wife tries to communicate with her husband. This engaging journey into the lives of continent-hopping artists is riveting and Kafkaesque. --Megan Staffel, author of THE EXIT COACH and THE CAUSATIVE FACTOR

Tara Deal's Life/Insurance is an arresting meditation on memory, marriage, and art as well as our attempts to weave the broken threads of a life into a tapestry of meaning. --Melissa Reddish, author of THE LIVES WE'VE YET TO LIVE

In this lyrical mental collage reminiscent of Virginia Woolf, a conversation emerges out of the strangely comforting and random thoughts of one woman who keeps asking questions. A colorful and compelling meditation on art and memory. --Holly Pobis, artist/photographer

Found beauty in a visual and lyrical mediascape. Red herrings and clues--a brush stroke, a rhythm or a spate of words--effortlessly invoke haiku, a song or a translucent collage, each advancing a darker narrative. On tenterhooks, we hypothesize the truth at the core of an irrevocable event. --Lisa Kirchner, singer/songwriter

Intricate, lyrical, dissonant, impossible to pin down, Life/Insurance is to be experienced as much as it is to be read. --Jim Naremore, author of THE ARTS OF LEGERDEMAIN AS TAUGHT BY GHOSTS and AMERICAN STILL LIFE