Critiques en avant-premièreValerie Miner

Winners will receive bound galleys (uncorrected proofs). *** Compelling and vivid, the stories in Bread and Salt use the metaphor of salvage to consider the reclamation of the natural environment, human relationships, and material objects. The characters in these stories live and travel in Tunisia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Turkey, France, and the United States and consider their individual agency in both local and global contexts. The characters' conflicts reveal how family and friendships are enriched by differences. *** Advance Praise: “Bread and Salt is an exquisite read. It’s lyrical, humorous, and intensely human in rich and quirky ways. Hauntings interrupt conversations and dreams; predictable lives are blown open; chance encounters morph into lifelong intimacies. Miner deftly transports her characters -and the reader- across myriad emotional, political, and geographical terrains, leaving us breathless. A marvel of a collection.” –Patricia Powell, author of The Pagoda and The Fullness of Everything “Meticulously observed, acutely felt, cosmopolitan in scope and vision, the stories in Valerie Miner’s Bread and Salt explore how, contrary to intuition, not being at home is ultimately the fundamental human condition. Whether that home takes the form of place, friends, lovers, or our own bodies, it will until the end remain wondrously, buoyantly, shatteringly unfinalizable.” —Lance Olsen, author of My Red Heaven “Across continents and oceans, in the waiting rooms that are the interstices of travel, through characters welcoming and leaving, Valerie Miner’s stories delineate the complex geometry of friendship both brief and lifelong.” –Carol Anshaw, author of Right after the Weather "Once again, Valerie Miner has written a book I don't want to put down. In Bread and Salt, Miner has constructed countless vibrant worlds. So many richly-drawn characters in this new collection! So many small treasures." —Camille T. Dungy, author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History