“When the Saints is a page-turner full of frankly enviable lines, but Sarah Mian is musing on deep matters: the nature of historical damage in families, and whether damaged people can animate their undamaged parts to move on. A Winter’s Bone for Nova Scotia. This book might make you happy-sad while you’re reading it, but you’ll be happy-sadder when you’re done.” —PADMA VISWANATHAN, author of The Toss of a Lemon and the Giller Prize finalist The Ever After of Ashwin Rao
“Seamlessly rendered in stark, brutal candour, When the Saints denotes the timely arrival of an intense, intrepid and by all turns invigorating new voice on the shelves of modern fiction. Unadorned and unapologetic, infused with a passion for truth, Mian’s wizened prose brilliantly captures the outcast’s hard-bitten, unsentimental longing for connection with a narrative drive and an eye for gritty family politics in keeping with some of David Adams Richards’ best offerings.” —JOEL THOMAS HYNES, author of the award-winning Down to the Dirt and Right Away Monday
“Tough, slick and full of grace, Sarah Mian’s gritty new voice is sure to find footholds in the Canadian literary landscape. When the Saints is a gripping story of love, sufferance and forgiveness.” —DONNA MORRISSEY, author of What They Wanted and Kit’s Law