"Tour de force"
"Vivid and Haunting"
"Page Turner"
Praise for That You Remember
“Brilliant pacing, characterization, and imagery. That You Remember is a universally worthy, socioeconomic tour-de-force. It is fiction resonating as fact.”
—Peter Kilborn, New York Times correspondent and author, Next Stop Reloville
“Isabel Reddy has written a big, sweeping novel with a big, beating heart. An entire mountain community comes to life in this epic story of a Kentucky mine disaster told from both sides as it follows the star-crossed love between an absentee mine owner from Connecticut and a beautiful local waitress. That You Remember could not be more relevant today, carrying an important message for our own time. Deep characterization and important themes mark this engrossing novel as a major achievement—as well as a page-turner.”
—Lee Smith, author, The Last Girls
“With this novel, Isabel Reddy has given us a landscape so dramatically rendered, we can almost walk around in it. As thoughtful as it is evocative, That You Remember is an ode to a region, an elegy for a tidal wave of destruction, vivid and haunting, full of life and loss alike.”
—Judy Goldman, author, Child: A Memoir
“The characters in That You Remember are decent, humble, salt-of-the-earth types who, frankly, don’t much get written about. Isabel Reddy allows them their dignity, their struggles, their humanity. This is, for my money, what the novel does best of all—takes situations that we think are so foreign to us and reminds us of our shared humanity, of all the things that unite and link us: wishes for love, family, safety. It’s a big-hearted and compassionate view of the world, and I think that’s immensely valuable, especially now.”
—Mark Sarvas, author, Memento Park
“A moving, imagined story of coal miners and their families leading up to a coal mine disaster in Appalachia.”
—Gerald M. Stern, author, The Buffalo Creek Disaster
“In this strongly felt, highly compelling debut novel, Isabel Reddy finds romance in the hardscrabble world of Appalachian coal mining.”
—Michael Shnayerson, author, Coal River