"Diane Gilliam's Linney Stepp brims with wisdom, wisdom as discovered and grown into. Her young narrator is born into a hardscrabble rural Appalachia near the turn of the twentieth century; while Linney's life is deeply felt, it's also something that happens to her, and she has no say as everything familiar is stripped away. With a poet's ear and a storyteller's kinship with fairy tale and dream, Gilliam brings our Linney to the threshold of 'all kinds of borning and all kinds of dying' to learn what it means to choose one's life. This is a novel that respects the deep caves and living streams that form the interior of a young girl struggling to become."

-Jessie Van Eerden

"In this, her first novel, Diane Gilliam invites readers to accompany her protagonist,16-year-old Linney Stepp, on her internal and external journeys to find authenticity and acceptance in an unforgiving early 20th century Eastern Kentucky. Inspired in part by classic fairy tales, the story appeals to a diverse readership, from young adults to elders, for anyone of any age will find their hearts captured by Linney's goodness, strength, and bravery. Aunt Hesty, too, seizes readers' imaginations and wonderment as she possesses a wisdom that defies traditional, constricted reality. Love prevails in this story of found family, with Linney discovering and claiming the fullness of that love."

-Theresa Burriss

"In Linney Stepp, acclaimed poet Diane Gilliam gives us the story of a girl who breaks free from the force-field of her family to become herself. When we meet Linney, she is about to be traded for her distant cousin Robbie so that he can help her dad on the farm and she can help his mother keep an eye on Aunt Hesty, who is prone to wandering and revelations. Both young people chafe at being swapped like tools. But before this rich and profound novel is over, what they have learned in exile-how to claim their own authority-will have transformed their lives. Set in Appalachian Kentucky in the early 1900s, and illuminated by dreams, myths, and fairy tales, Linney Stepp offers its readers transformation, too. By the novel's end, Linney has learned how to say NO to what would harm her. She has grown the strength to ask what she needs to ask and say what she needs to say. Her story shows how. Don't miss it!"

-George Ella Lyon, Kentucky Poet Laureate 2015-2016 and author

of With a Hammer for My Heart