“Fans of Raymond Carver's spare, carefully crafted stories will rejoice... Here arrives another author with a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue and a dead- on eye for conjuring an entire universe with one simple detail. Johnston's genius lies in weaving a web of optimism around a series of difficult topics. [I]f they are read as they seem destined to be — obsessively, in one sitting — their rapt audience will turn the last page with a profound sense of calm.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
“A gorgeous, accomplished debut.”
— David Mitchell, The Independent of London
“Corpus Christi, Texas, provides the setting for Johnston's debut collection of ten hard-eyed, soulful stories, but it is primarily a country of the mind. These stories are large hearted, and intense. In their pathos, to quote C. S. Lewis on Chaucer, "every fluctuation of gnawing hope, every pitiful subterfuge of the flattering imagination, is held up to our eyes without mercy" (The Allegory of Love); and yet their effect is spiritually bracing. We are human to the last.”
— Boston Globe
