“The sensuous lure of summer—from primal, enveloping ocean water to the warm touch of the sun—is vividly evoked in this first novel.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Beautifully written . . . a seamless and almost instinctive prose that often reads more like poetry than fiction.”—Robert Olmstead, The New York Times Book Review
“Dazzling and charged . . . Darcey Steinke has the sensuous and precise visions of female and male, and of the light and dark as the edge of the sea.”—John Casey
“The familiar materials of the novel are as fresh as a breeze off the ocean in Darcey Steinke’s treatment. The book can be read in a couple of hours, but it lingers like memories.”—William L. Tazewell, Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star
“So apt that you feel the sand in your shorts by page 162 . . . filled with significant little whispers that echo as if from a shell . . . [Emily’s] nature unrolls as slowly as a breeze might sway bindweed, and develops as quietly and surely as that of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment or of the antagonist of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. . . . Wise swimmers will dive in here.”—George Myers, Jr., The Columbus Dispatch
“A precise evocation of place . . . a gifted stylist . . . Ocracoke Island springs into sharp focus. The reader smells the sea, feels the grit of sand, almost squints against the glint of sun on water. . . . Vigorous characters that we cannot help but care about, doing interesting things in a place that is vivid and distinctive.”—Chauncey Mabe, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“[A] poetic first novel . . . Steinke’s imagery is at once vivid and delicate. . . . An intriguing debut that hits at promising work to come.”—Publishers Weekly
“Up Through the Water is beautifully done, a startlingly good debut.”—The Washingtonian
“Up Through the Water is a wonderful book—fresh, vital, filled with characters whom you want to remember. The writing is poetic, the images new and invigorating.”—Ben Greer
“A novelist with a poet’s eye.”—Lex Alexander, Greensboro News & Record
Grove Press
