Affirms and enhances her considerable artistry.
– The State
Heady reading…. These characters are memorable and believable…. Ms. Sayers has a gift for voice…. She writes clearly and forcefully, with her own version of the humor that Southern writers from Eudora Welty to Flannery O’Connor to Reynolds Price use so tellingly.
– New York Times Book Review
Not only a delight, a genuine writerly accomplishment. Sayers is just so lively and nervy a writer you want her to get something else in print right away, so you can find out what voices capture her imagination next.
– Philadelphia Inquirer
If William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County was a postage stamp of the South, then Valerie Sayers’ fictional hamlet, Due East., S.C., is a microchip… brings to mind novelist Walker Percy and his Kierkegaardian leaps to faith.
– New York Daily News
Subtle, sometimes dark humor…a masterly job of weaving together the varied strands that are life in Due East, S.C., a delightful place for readers to visit time and again.
– Winston-Salem Journal
Ms. Sayers’ characters speak in an authentic voice, and her novel is filled with the true sights and sounds of the South Carolina Lowcountry.
– Charleston News and Courier
Begs to be read aloud and shared. Sayers has a voice, and it’s one the reader wants to keep hearing from.
– Publishers Weekly
Disarming honesty. Her story of women scorned is told with the confiding, double-edged frankness of a small-town secret.
– Seattle Times
All the characters talk to us so entertainingly we could listen to them endlessly…. Valerie Sayers is a powerfully gifted writer.
– Atlanta Constitution
A fascinating study of what drives people crazy and the varied forms of coping they use to come back from the brink…. We’re left hoping for yet another installment in the small-town lives of these life-sized characters.
– Orange County Register
A virtuoso of portraiture…. The second visit to Due East is even better than the first, and I hope that Sayers will allow us to come again.
– Belles Lettres