“The Quickening is a rare jewel of a novel: an elegantly structured page-turner driven as much by its exquisite lyricism as by the gripping story at its core. It wondrously weaves a riveting half century of American Midwestern history through the sensual, intimate, often strange details that make up a life. Michelle Hoover is a stunning writer, and this is a fierce and beautiful book.”

—MAUD CASEY, author of Genealogy

“The Quickening, through its carefully wrought, precise prose, builds with a heartrending power that lingers long after the final page. Michelle Hoover is a writer to watch.”

—DON LEE, author of Wrack and Ruin

“From the opening pages of this beautiful novel, I found myself immersed in the lives of these two farm women between the wars and their struggles with their families, themselves, the land, and each other. The Quickening is such a fully realized, sensually vivid, psychologically intelligent novel that it’s hard to believe it is a debut, but it is, and a sparkling one.”

—MARGOT LIVESEY, author of The House on Fortune Street

“Just as the women and men in this strikingly assured debut novel wrest life out of the land they work, Michelle Hoover wrests from her characters’ hearts, and from this heart-touching story, understandings rich in complexity and compassion. She paints the intricacies of their interiors as skillfully as she does the details of the world that surrounds them. What a gift she has given us in this wise book that lets us so vividly experience both.”

—JOSH WEIL, author of The New Valle