"I read The Sound of Rabbits with a growing sense of recognition and love for Ruby, her family, and the others in her orbit. As in her past and forthcoming work, Janice Deal tenderly nurtures the bonds between reader and character with her great empathy and keen understanding of what it means to be alive. In The Sound of Rabbits, Deal offers a moving portrait of one family's hopes, disappointments, and sorrows in a voice that is unflinching, achingly poignant, and unforgettable." --Katherine Shonk, author of The Red Passport and Happy Now?

"The Sound of Rabbits is a heartfelt novel of fragile love between sisters, estranged through distance and grudges, striving to find their bond, even if they don't have the words to express it. With keen insights and spot-on descriptions, Janice Deal animates her novel with characters from a small town in Wisconsin where parents struggle to make ends meet, children seek their passions, nature is cruel, and the past is never really past. An unflinching, yet loving, portrait of a complicated family." --Jan English Leary, author of Thicker Than Blood and Skating on the Vertical

"At the heart of Janice Deal's new novel The Sound of Rabbits are two sisters: one who stayed and one who fled. Val, in a sad marriage with two daughters, remained in their small hometown, and Ruby, who got away, hides her disappointments and failures. The two are brought together as their mother approaches death. Re-enacting old conflicts and finding new ones, each woman seeks solace from the other, and refuses it. Deal weaves together the two sisters' stories, present and past, with those of their mother, Val's girls, Val's silent husband Len, and others they touch in their small town, creating a luminous web in which each interwoven life is a strand that sets the entire web shaking and shimmering.