Looking to read more Indiana authors?
Every month, we’re releasing a book review highlighting a new book by a Hoosier author, reviewed by a Hoosier writer. Check back every month for a new recommendation or look for the review in your local paper.
All Book Reviews
All He Knew
By Helen Frost | Reviewed By Skila Brown
Helen Frost has a way of carving out interesting characters and shaping deep, rich stories, using the cleverest of a poet’s tools. Her novels Salt and Keesha’s House have always been two of my favorite novels in verse, and her latest book, All He Knew, is another showcase of her master skills as a poet, […]
Be Holding
By Ross Gay | Reviewed By Mitchell L. H. Douglas
For Ross Gay, a writer who embodies Lucille Clifton’s assertion that “you come to poetry not out of what you know but out of what you wonder,” a book-length poem is a thrilling vehicle. In Be Holding, Gay’s love of basketball—as a player and fan—finds a fitting muse in Julius “Dr. J” Erving. That he […]
The Way of Imagination
By Scott Russell Sanders | Reviewed By Kevin McKelvey
Scott Russell Sanders has always provided us with a way to look at the Ohio Valley, at Indiana and beyond, to make sense of what is around us, and that continues in The Way of Imagination, published this year by Counterpoint Press. Sanders is looking back at a full life lived in Bloomington, more personal […]
Library of My Hands
By Joseph Heithaus | Reviewed By Shari Wagner
Library of My Hands by Joseph Heithaus begins like a medieval book of hours, with a richly illuminated capital letter. The introductory poem “Ode to the Letter A” addresses “Aleph’s child”—Aleph being the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, a letter signifying the oneness of God—and then draws forth a profusion of visual metaphors: “point, […]
The Town of Whispering Dolls
By Susan Neville | Reviewed By Michael Martone
Wrong Russia; Wrong Russian: The “Realism” of Susan Neville’s The Town of Whispering Dolls “We don’t take our dissidents out to Duluth and shoot them,” William Dean Howells, editor at The Atlantic, wrote, arguing, at the dawn of the 20th Century, not only that American literature be “Realistic” but that it be a certain kind […]
You Should See Me in a Crown
By Leah Johnson | Reviewed By Kekla Magoon
High school senior Liz Lighty loves being in band, staying under the social radar, and—unbeknownst to all but her best friends—girls. It’s not that it’s a secret, exactly, it just…never really comes up. When financial aid for Pennington, her top-choice college, falls through, Liz voluntarily-but-unwillingly joins the popular crowd in their high school’s annual contest to be named prom queen. The crown comes with a $10,000 scholarship award—just enough cash to get […]
Where the Angels Lived
By Margaret McMullan | Reviewed By Rabbi Sandy Sasso
What does it mean to find the name of a relative you never knew existed? What would it take to travel to another country to piece together a picture of that person’s life? What would compel you to upend your, your husband and son’s life to learn about a person who never even appeared in a family photo album? In Where […]
How Quickly She Disappears
By Raymond Fleischmann | Reviewed By Larry D. Sweazy
Midwesterners are often characterized as stoic, polite to a fault, and hard workers who do anything they can not to draw attention to themselves. Enter Elisabeth Metzger Pfautz, known to her friends and husband as Else, the main character in Raymond Fleischmann’s debut novel, How Quickly She Disappears. Elisabeth was born and raised in Pennsylvania, a product of a small town and farming community […]
Indiana Hill Country Poems
By Norbert Krapf | Reviewed By Edward Byrne
Norbert Krapf deftly invites readers of his poetry to visit places personally important to him and to meet the people, past and present, with whom he has shared those locations. Within the carefully crafted lines of poetry in Indiana Hill Country Poems, his work repeatedly displays deep insight into the human condition, compelling a certain […]
The Lucky One
By Lori Rader-Day | Reviewed By Michael Koryta
The missing stay missing, so they can’t report back, Lori Rader-Day writes on the first page of her excellent fifth novel, The Lucky One. And then she proceeds to report back for the missing, across 377 pages of intricately woven suspense. The Lucky One is very much a novel of contemporary concerns, and even contemporary […]
