A novel that deserves every prize it received.
I was resistant to this for longer than I should have been. Kingsolver earns every comparison she courts. The prose has the kind of forward momentum that makes you read standing up, and the voice of Damon Fields is one of the most fully realised first-person narrators I have encountered in years. What it has to say about poverty, addiction, and the failures of systems designed to protect children is said with the precision of a novelist who has done her research and the fury of one who cares deeply.