Their Houses

Meredith Sue Willis teaches novel writing at New York University's School of Professional Studies. She is the author of twenty-two books, including A Space Apart, Love Palace, Out of the Mountains: Appalachian Stories, and Oradell at Sea (West Virginia University Press). She has received literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and has won awards such as the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, the West Virginia Library Association Literary Merit Award, and the Appalachian Heritage Denny C. Plattner Prize for both fiction and nonfiction.

Full of surprising twists and turns, this sharp, tough-minded, compelling novel takes us deeply into its high-low milieus and conflicted characters. A cross between noir and redemption, it's a terrific read."" - Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait Inside My Head ""Every move in this jolt-filled tale-told in the sweet, slyly humorous cadences of West Virginia-is perfect. Willis has the stuff from beginning to end."" - Diane Simmons, author of The Courtship of Eva Eldridge ""With deep sympathy for her characters, Willis writes in lucid and compelling prose about one of the dark undersides of American life. Their Houses reads fast, as a compelling series of mysteries, and reminds us of how much legacy we all carry, not only in our bodies and our genes but in our stories."" - Jane Lazarre, author of The Communist and the Communist's Daughter and Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons