Publisher Review

A virtuosic portrait of midcentury America itself - physically stalwart, unerringly generous, hopeful that tragedy can be mitigated through faith in land and neighbor alike...This is not fiction as literary uproar. This is a refined realism of the sort Flaubert himself championed, storytelling that accrues detail by lean detail...Hunt's prose is galvanized by powerful questions. Who were those forebears who tilled the land for decades, seemingly without complaint? How did they fashion happiness, or manage soaring passions, in their conformist communities? He re-examines the pastoral with ardent precision...What Hunt ultimately gives us is a pure and shining book, an America where community becomes a 'symphony of souls, ' a sustenance greater than romance or material wealth for those wise enough to join in * New York Times * Zorrie is a quiet novel about an ordinary life. And when you're ordinary, you need resilience like Zorrie's to survive in an uncaring world. Laird Hunt's short and affecting novel follows Zorrie Underwood's life from childhood in Depression-era Indiana, when she's orphaned, to early adulthood, when she's left on her own, to an eventual marriage and working life * O Magazine's Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Novels of 2021 * Zorrie is Hunt at his best. Compelling from its first page. [A] tender, glowing novel that is just as beautiful as Marilynne Robinson's Gilead or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams. -- Anthony Doerr * Observer, Best Book of 2021 * Hunt's skill is in taking familiar themes such as grief, love, memory and the passage of time and making us think afresh about the hastening decades. * Spectator * Throughout these 160 pages, a life unfurls, passes and lingers. Laird Hunt's Zorrie is a magnificent character who truly feels like a friend - gentle, unsentimental and poetic. * Sunday Business Post Review *