Blood and Milk: A Novel in Stories is a most impressive feat of impersonation. Blackmon seems to inhabit the wife and mother at the center of these stories right down to her synapses. It’s as if he knows not only her every thought but her every inflection, the exact phrases with which she speaks to herself in the privacy of her consciousness. There’s not a sentence here without the mark of truth to it.
—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Illumination:
A Novel, and The Brief History of the Dead
Readers will fall in love with the novel’s protagonist, Becky Hawkins . . . . All of the novel’s main characters—Becky’s elderly grandfather; Ruby, her brain-injured child; Jake, her youngest; Claire, her oldest; and Mike, her husband—are drawn with such a deft but loving hand that the reader will begin to think of them as family. Because the characters span four generations, Blackmon is able to touch on themes of birth, death, and rebirth: by the last story, Becky and Mike have come full-circle with one another in a way that leaves them—and us—rounder with understanding.
—Jacinda Townsend, author of Saint Monkey
