“Billy Lombardo's exquisite first novel shows us a fractured family the only way it can accurately be shown––through a fractured lens. The sorrow and honesty of this wise book is almost unbearable, but it's literature's best kind of unbearable, built upon a foundation of generosity, heart, and masterful craft.”

— Patrick Somerville, author of The Cradle, and TV writer of Maniac, The Leftovers, Station Eleven

“Billy Lombardo is a bard for those of us who feel too much, and a master of somehow translating the untranslatable emotion into gesture, into language. Lombardo’s characters are unified by their profound connections to one another and their utter fearlessness—or rather Lombardo’s utter fearlessness—to feel deeply. We do not, as American readers and publishers, have been taught to avoid sentiment like the plague. Thank the gods of literature that Billy Lombardo was not listening.”

— Gina Frangello, author of Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason

“Lombardo knows this world intimately and writes with a naturalness that makes his streetsmart surface wholly convincing, but the seeming effortlessness of his storytelling depends on a sophisticated sense of craft and a deep sense of empathy.”

— Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago, I Sailed with Magellan, Ecstatic Cahoots