"I love books like this. Books that come from out of the blue and surprise, tenderize and mesmerize me."
~ Dr. Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine
"An achingly vulnerable, elegantly worded meditation on grief and recovery."
~ Kirkus Reviews
"Compelling and moving. A tender and deep evocation of Mexican American culture."
~ Beth Alvarado, author of Jillian in the Borderlands, Anxious Attachments, Anthropologies
"Artful...Garza is off to a strong start."
~ Publisher's Weekly
Additional praise for The Field...
This book is the song of the sister who died by the sister who survived. It is a distillation, a documentary whose milestones are marked by St. Teresa, Dickinson, Neruda, Dante, the Gospel of Thomas, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. If you want to know how a family touches grief tenderly and respectfully as loss drills its terror, if you want to know how a ten-year-old confronts darkness, conducts a life, and delivers her heart back to its origins whole—read Garza's testimony, where a simple field in Ohio vibrates with the knowledge that the important matters weed themselves out and one is left with the essential nature of one's love.
~ Barbara Cully, author of Desire Reclining, The New Intimacy, and Shoreline Series
At its Norse root, haunt, or heimta, means "to lead home." That sense of loss and longing infuses Victoria Garza's profound journey to make sense of a childhood tragedy. Grappling with guilt and trauma through vignettes as sharp and luminous as stained glass, The Field opens a space between memory and dream where angels walk among us and death becomes a door. Garza reminds us it's emotions that matter' and that grief is not an affliction, but a deep, abiding expression of love.
~ Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, author of Finding Querencia: Essays from In Between.