Paula Coomer directs an honest and unflinching look at the lives of strong, resilient, and deeply vulnerable rural women -- women who face prejudice, poverty, and small-mindedness with strength and grace and sometimes very human flaws. Coomer's deep knowledge of place and culture is evident, she writes in her endnote, "This collection is my attempt to take my family history and create from it stories about women who own themselves,
women who are victors, not victims." Indeed, Coomer captures their hardscrabble lives with compassion, and one gets the sense that through her writing this community of women are understood and cared for. A gorgeous collection filled with unforgettable voices and stories."

-Laura Pritchett, winner of the PEN USA Award for Fiction, author of The Blue Hour and Hell's Bottom Colorado