In 2012, Claire Vaye Watkins burst onto the literary landscape with her prize-winning short story collection, Battleborn. In Gold Fame Citrus, Watkins follows through on her literary promise with an excellent novel, set in a drought-ridden California in a future that feels alarmingly near.

Gold Fame Citrus is the story of Luz, a woman born when California was merely on the cusp of collapse but who must make her way in a world where the waters have run dry and the borders into more verdant parts of the country are blocked off to people of her provenance, so-called “Mojavs.” Along with a drifter named Ray, Luz has managed to carve out an existence in the arid remnants of a place that once glittered, and the two have learned to get by however they can. When they become guardians to an enigmatic slip of a child, however, Luz’s desiccated dreams of what life once was and, perhaps, could some day be again, gush forth. For the sake of their family, they decide to brave the ever-encroaching dune sea, a desolate shifting stretch of sand that separates them from a more habitable climate. But the wasteland they have been led to believe is barren is far from empty and contains untold hazards—some physical, some spiritual, some psychological.

There is no shortage of dystopian literature examining the destruction to the planet that man has wrought and humankind’s tenacious will to survive, but Gold Fame Citrus easily catapults itself into the upper echelon of the genre. Deeply evocative and emotional, Watkins’ writing is hypnotic, drawing readers into a fevered lullaby that feels fantastical and all-too-real simultaneously. This is the kind of novel that readers will want to consume in great gulps as they race to discover Luz and company’s fate, but Gold Fame Citrus is best read slowly, allowing the words to wash over you.

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As you’d imagine from the title, bats are a key element in Zachary Thomas Dodson’s intricately constructed and elaborately illustrated debut. But the book’s real spirit animal is the ouroboros: a snake eating its own tail. Built as a novel within a novel, with supporting material in the form of letters and journal pages and drawings (all reproduced here as if photocopied from an archive), Bats of the Republic follows a pair of adventurous young men, several generations apart, on similar missions.

The first of these is Zeke Thomas, an heir to a senate seat in the citystate of Texas in the year 2143. The post-disaster world he lives in is strictly controlled, with communities organized around “life phases” in order to facilitate repopulation. Most historical documents were lost in whatever disaster befell the planet, so now there’s a recording-and-archiving system with creepy parallels to the modern world, a nod to the perils of ceding privacy to government in exchange for security. Zeke’s trouble begins with a letter he inherits that was never opened or properly archived—a criminal offense. Will he report it?

Back in 1843, Zadock Thomas—an ancestor to Zeke—also has a problem caused by a mysterious, unopened letter. Zadock works at Chicago’s new Museum of Flying and is in love with the daughter of the museum’s founder. But just as he’s about to propose, his boss sends him on a mission to deliver a letter to a storied general in the embattled republic of Texas. If he doesn’t get back in time—or at all—his beloved will be forced to marry his awful cousin. Naturally, Zadock encounters every possible obstacle, including a cave filled with bats that may or may not be related to the bats that live in the archive of the future world. Will he make it back home?

The stories circle around and fold into each other (in one instance, literally) to delightful and dizzying effect. Dodson is a book designer, and the book is subtitled “an illuminated novel.” The often elaborate design serves the story, underscoring the various narrative voices and timelines, as well as adding visual texture. It’s a pleasure to get lost here, though you might be glad the author includes a few maps.

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Sloane Crosley is a familiar name to many readers of nonfiction, both for her self-deprecating essay collections and her contributions to the New York Times. Now she lends her insight and sense of humor to the world of fiction in a debut novel, The Clasp. 

Kezia, Nathaniel and Victor, three friends from college, are reunited at the extravagant wedding of a mutual friend. Though they have been semi-estranged since graduation, all their college feelings resurface in the present day. Victor harbors feelings for Kezia; Kezia is infatuated with Nathaniel; and Nathaniel is absorbed with himself. Victor, never at his best in social situations, separates from the reception and wakes up to the groom’s mother slapping him the next morning. Her abrupt wake-up call transitions to the story of a valuable necklace that disappeared during the Nazi occupation of France. Consumed with the idea of finding this necklace, Victor sets out on a journey that takes not only him, but also Kezia and Nathaniel, from Miami to New York to France. All three friends experience a level of self-discovery along the way. 

Crosley is an innate storyteller and writes with her signature wit and flair. Each character’s flaw—whether it be Victor’s apathy, Kezia’s need to be needed or Nathaniel’s self-absorption—is relatable, and The Clasp speaks to flaws in humanity and friendships in a charming and realistic way. This novel entertains even as it provokes internal examination of one’s own relationships.

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The challenge for an author who writes about a lonely character is to make that character interesting—and keep him that way. Happily, this is what Lori Ostlund has done in After the Parade, her sensitive and realistic tale of the excruciatingly lonely Aaron Englund. What’s intriguing about him is that he seems not to mind his loneliness. This may seem odd, for the difference between loneliness and solitude is that a person minds the former and doesn’t mind the latter. But Aaron holds his pain like a shield against a world that never had much use for him.

The story alternates between scenes of Aaron’s childhood and his early middle age, at a moment when he is contemplating just how life ended up this way. We start with his parents, who should have listened to Philip Larkin and never reproduced in the first place. Aaron’s dad was a brute who didn’t even bother to hide his hatred of his sensitive son. Aaron’s mother loved him for a time, but abandoned him when he was a teenager. Aaron, too gentle or maybe too passive to embrace his father’s brutality, learns much from this disastrous woman. When we meet Aaron, he is preparing to leave his partner of 20 years with a cold efficiency. At least Aaron tells him goodbye.

Still, Ostlund—a Flannery O’Connor Award winner who spent 15 years shaping this novel—gives us reason to hope for her troubled protagonist. Aaron is befriended by a detective whose childhood was as rotten as his, and a nice man he meets in a café seems interested in him. And he is loved—by his ESL students; by his ex-boyfriend, Walter, in spite of everything; and especially by Walter’s sister, whose support helps him do a hard thing near the book’s end. After the Parade is a sad book, but a hopeful one.

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Memoirist and literary agent Bill Clegg (Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man) has now conquered the world of literary fiction with his searing debut, Did You Ever Have a Family. As a boy “wakes to the sound of sirens,” we learn that an explosion has taken the life of a bride and groom just before their wedding day. Clegg then slowly, intricately reveals the wider ramifications of this unthinkable tragedy through the eyes of more than a dozen characters. The title (from an Alan Shapiro poem) most deeply refers to June Reid, who lost the most in the explosion that fateful day. But Clegg’s wide lens compels the reader to think deeply about what a family is and how they influence us, for better or worse. 

The pain in this novel is raw and visceral, though there are brilliant, subtle touches as well. In one scene, a mother and son have a talk they should have had a long time ago. Across the street, “two teenage boys scrape paint from the house,” a revealing image of painstakingly stripping away the past. Ultimately, readers of Did You Ever Have a Family will be reminded of both Faulkner (in Clegg’s dark material and kaleidoscopic storytelling) and Colum McCann (in the genuine search for meaning or redemption amid tragedy). 

Clegg’s novel is not for every reader. In addition to the bleak events, the flashbacks and lack of dialogue can become a bit wearisome. Nevertheless, Clegg has produced an insightful portrait of adversity. The characters, by and large, are memorable and their struggles genuine. One of Clegg’s guilt-wracked characters describes the reflection of the night sky on a lake as “both ominous and beautiful.” The same can be said of Did You Ever Have a Family.

This article was originally published in the September 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

They say that with every loss comes a gain, but in Charlie Cates’ case, that seems unimaginable. Her 5-year-old son’s sudden death from a brain aneurysm has turned her world upside down. A divorced single parent, Charlie put Keegan at the center of her world. Well-intentioned attempts from neighbors and colleagues to help Charlie get back on her feet only remind her of her dreaded new normal. When her old editor at Cold Crimes magazine calls with an unusual opportunity, Charlie—ready for a change—boldly seizes it, heading to Chicory, Louisiana, to write about a long-cold missing-persons case.

In 1982, 3-year-old Gabriel Deveau disappeared from his bedroom in the middle of the night. Although the case was highly publicized and ruthlessly investigated, no one was ever convicted, and no body was ever found. Charlie hopes to find a new angle—and she also thinks that the psychic visions she’s been having of children in danger since Keegan’s death may help her solve the mystery. But once she is inside the gates of the Deveaus’ luxurious plantation home, Charlie realizes there is more than one skeleton in the closet.

Hester Young’s debut novel, The Gates of Evangeline, is a thrilling Southern Gothic mystery. Full of family secrets, betrayals and unexpected romances, it pulls readers along on a dark, twisted ride through the Louisiana swamp.

This article was originally published in the September 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Parnaz Foroutan’s debut, The Girl from the Garden, explores the fortunes of the Malacoutis, a wealthy Jewish family in Iran at the turn of the 20th century, as remembered by the family’s only surviving daughter, Mahboubeh. Now elderly and living in Los Angeles, Mahboubeh wanders her garden, awash in memories that seem more real than her California home. 

In Mahboubeh’s memory, her great aunt Rakhel is a bitter old woman yelling obscenities out of an open window. But she also imagines Rakhel as a very young wife. At a time when a woman’s value was measured by her fertility, Rakhel’s inability to get pregnant was cause for despair. Their infertility (blamed completely on Rakhel) proves torturous to her husband, Asher, and the situation worsens after Rakhel’s sister-in-law gives birth to a healthy boy. When Asher contemplates taking a second wife, Rakhel’s behavior becomes more and more violent. 

Foroutan was born in Iran, though she currently lives in Los Angeles, and the stories explored in The Girl from the Garden were inspired by her own family. Though the reader gets a taste of what the Iranian Jewish community was like, this is really a novel about the culture of women, from the ritual baths and other religious traditions to the gardens and distinctly gendered spaces of the home. The novel mimics cinematic techniques in which one scene dissolves into another, shifting seamlessly across decades and continents. We never learn Mahboubeh’s own story, but the sense of a personality forged by the sacrifice, betrayal and restrictions of the women who came before her will remain with the reader long after the book is over. 

This article was originally published in the September 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Constance Kopp has never quite fit in: She is tall and broad-shouldered, and she doesn’t care much for keeping house—a rarity for women in 1914. She sticks close to her sisters, Norma and Fleurette, and together they form an odd but functional trio. Norma is stoic and reserved; Constance is bold and proud; and Fleurette, the youngest, is wide-eyed and excitable. Since the death of their mother, the sisters have become closer than ever, living in the countryside after the need to keep secrets forced their move from the city more than 15 years prior.

On a rare trip into town, the sisters have an altercation with a powerful silk factory owner, Henry Kaufman, who refuses to assume responsibility for the damage he caused to the family wagon. Constance seeks restitution and raises Kaufman’s ire. As Constance defends her family, she is forced to confront her past and brace for a new future.

Author Amy Stewart is best known for her nonfiction (The Drunken Botanist; Wicked Plants). Her first novel, Girl Waits with Gun, grew out of a newspaper clipping about the Kopps that she discovered during her research on a gin smuggler named Henry Kaufman. While Stewart never learned if the smuggler Kaufman was the same man who antagonized the sisters, she was intrigued by the little-known Constance Kopp, who later became one of the first female deputy sheriffs.

Through painstaking attention to detail, Stewart has created an elegant, moving narrative of an unusual real-life woman who dared defy the odds to ensure the safety of her family.

This article was originally published in the September 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.