There’s a novelistic intensity to the story, with Payne dwelling on vivid recollected scenes, recreating their atmospherics and teasing out every buried emotional tremor and element of foreshadowing, but his prose also has the rawness of a confessional… Writing with a mixture of clear-eyed realism and lyrical elegy, Payne shows how a family’s pain, resentment, and loss get transmuted into love.
— Publishers Weekly