Whiskey & Ribbons

January 1, 2018

Following Every Kiss a War, a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor and the Iowa Short Fiction Awards, Cross-Smith reveals life's pleasures, treasures, and inevitable pain in a debut novel. Eamon is a passionately committed police officer shot in the line of duty, leaving behind a loving family that includes wife Evi, unborn son Noah, and adoptive brother Dalton. Upon Eamon's death, Dalton moves in with Evi to help raise Noah. Dalton and Evi grow closer, and a relationship blossoms as they discover more about themselves. The novel is told from the perspective of all three adult characters, moving fluidly between past and present as Eamon speaks before his murder about anticipating fatherhood, Evi speaks months later during a freak blizzard that has trapped her and Dalton, and Dalton ponders the direction of his life. What if? That's the question Evi and Dalton often ask while trying to come to terms with the fact that Eamon is dead. Cross-Smith offers a humanity when some characters could be condemned for their actions and intersperses bits of poetry that make even death tragically beautiful. VERDICT Written with the emotional impact of Ayobami Adebayo's Stay with Me, this work will appeal to lovers of literary fiction.--Ashanti White, Fayetteville, NC

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2018
A debut novel about loss, grief, family secrets, and the unexpected sources from which people take solace after unbelievable tragedy.Cross-Smith (Every Kiss a War, 2014) follows three characters, alternating among their interlinked stories as they struggle to get on with their lives in death's shadow. We find the widowed Evangeline Royce snowed into her house six months after the death of her husband, Eamon, a police officer who was killed on the job. Eamon's lifelong friend Dalton Berkeley-Royce is with her, helping take care of her infant son, Noah, who was born 16 days after his father's death, and she's wrestling with guilt over her developing attraction to a man she'd previously thought of only as a friend. Dalton is also grieving Eamon, who was as close to him as a brother. After his mother committed suicide while he was in middle school, Dalton was adopted by the Royce family; he never knew his biological father. When Eamon died, Dalton swore to protect Evangeline and Noah; he struggles to fulfill that duty while coming to terms with a revelation about his own history and relationship with Eamon. Meanwhile, Eamon's ghost haunts the novel's proceedings both figuratively and literally. He narrates his own life and death from beyond the grave, providing crucial background on the tortured history he shares with Dalton. The structure--modeled after the musical conceit of the fugue, or a melody that is developed via interlocking parts--is an inspired way to tell what is otherwise a simple story. Beyond the tragedy of Eamon's death and the will they/won't they tension of Evangeline and Dalton's relationship, not much actually happens. Instead, the novel is content to circle around the complexities of memory and family history on its way to a revelation that falls a little flat and is occasionally marred by clumsy prose.The intricacies of the grieving process are revealed in this sensitive novel.

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