Critics' Picks Out in Paperback

"Two adult sisters live with their invalid mother on a Pacific Northwest island, drifting into debt and isolation until the unexpected appearance of a bear upends their lives. This mythical novel of obsession, moral reckoning, and aspiration glows with fairy tale magic." – Lauren LeBlanc, The Boston Globe

"Barry is an Irish writer to the core with his wild, dark humor and his Gaelic intonations, a beautifully skewed syntax holding up a delicate balance of spluttering facetiousness and a sly acknowledgment of inevitable tragedy... Barry’s writing often seems like a tornado’s mix of James Joyce, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and Flannery O’Connor. But what comes flying out of the tornado is pure, unmitigated Barry." – Michael Pearson, New York Journal of Books

"Packed with harrowing stories and illuminating revelations, 'Rebel Girl' finds Hanna rejecting the victory lap premise of most music memoirs to instead interrogate and, by extension, make peace with past regrets... a voice that’s often bitingly funny but never insincere." – Zack Ruskin, San Francisco Chronicle

"It is the only book I have read this year that has made me cry... Van der Wouden has produced the rare novel about World War II, the Holocaust, and their aftermath that succeeds in feeling fully, intimately human... [The plot] twist is not what makes The Safekeep remarkable; what does is the extraordinary, emotional story Van der Wouden crafts around it, and the pitch-perfect voice she brings to the characters who experience its consequences." – Talya Zax, The Washington Post