CYNTHIA REEVES
2007 NOVELLA PRIZE SELECTED BY MARGARET LUONGO
2007. 9781424331093 / 9781424331086
$15.00 Amazon | Pathway
Badlands portrays the twenty–four–year marriage of Caro and Daniel Singleman—the marriage that was, is, and might have been. As the dying Caro confronts a night of crisis, the couple attempt to reshape the present by reconstructing the past through the interleaving of memory, hallucination, and dream. In this fraught terrain, Badlands explores two human mysteries—the inscrutability of the heart and the persistence of hope in the face of overwhelming loss.
Reviews & Such
- Badlands brings us searingly close to two painful losses, the wholeness of the body and the survival of a people. But Cynthia Reeves makes the experience cathartic through her gorgeously wrought prose and her profoundly empathic spirit. This is a fierce book, and a brave one…
—Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After
- …Badlands is a marvel, a visceral and electrifying interweaving of several narratives that are, ultimately, one narrative. … Stunning for its complexity, depth, and emotional resonance, this is a story of love and betrayal and still more love… —C.J. Hribal, author of The Company Car
- …Badlands does not unfold so much as it…exhumes. Archaeology…composes the breccia of the book’s stratified form and epochal prose. In layers, in style and in content, Reeves reveals and reveals again—sub-dermal, subconscious, sublime… —Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone
- Beth Kephart reviewed Badlands on her blog on April 4, 2014.
- Marc Schuster reviewed Badlands on Small Press Reviews on December 2, 2011.
- The Potomac Review reviewed Badlands here.
- Read Anna Clark’s interview with Cynthia Reeves on the Women’s International Perspective website. An extended version of the interview can be found at Ms. Clark’s personal site.
- Mountain Xpress in Asheville, North Carolina has reviewed Badlands. Read it here. Reeves’ local newspaper offers this profile.
About the Author
Cynthia Reeves is a native of the Philadelphia area and lives with her husband and two children near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Crab Orchard Review, Ontario Review, and Wreckage of Reason: Anthology of XXperimental Women Writers Writing in the 21st Century. She is currently at work on a novel in stories set in post-World War I Italy, three of which have been published in Colorado Review, Silk Road, and Words+Images 2007. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. Badlands is her first book.
