Praise for This Town Sleeps

“Staples’ talent lies in his ability to capture all sides of a phenomenon—the desperation to leave home and the pull to return; the safety of the closet and the freedom of living outside of it; the traditions that keep culture alive and their loss.”

—ERIC NEWMAN, Bookforum

“By turns cynical and plain-spoken, Staples is a guide with inside knowledge about the lives he depicts . . . A clear-eyed and distinctive debut.”

—Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)

“With gentle wit, frank sensuality, and a keen eye for small town and reservation life, Dennis E. Staples debuts a tender, suspenseful, irresistible first novel!”

—LOUISE ERDRICH, author of The Night Watchman

“By turns elegant and gritty, angry and funny. Staples’s work is emotional without being sentimental. We move through the dream that is this novel, unable to move or not move, arrested by the striking sentences and sentiments of a voice we can’t sleep to, one which wakes in us the ability to understand so much about ourselves and the way history and time weigh on us in ways it’s both understandable to stay asleep or to have to wake up from.”

—TOMMY ORANGE, author of There There

“In a debut that intertwines the spiritual and the cynical . . . Dennis E. Staples demonstrates a green but thrilling emerging talent . . . Staples’s tale of love, loss, anger, memory and identity is rendered in such keen prose that the setting seems sharp and alive—not, in fact, asleep . . . This is an imaginative, ambitious novel, a resounding argument that Staples is a writer to watch.”

—Shelf Awareness

“Staples’ first novel is an arresting look at the intersection of past and present. Himself an Ojibwe, Staples writes with authority about his characters and setting . . . An auspicious debut with a memorable protagonist.”

—Booklist

“[Dennis E. Staples’s] novel, This Town Sleeps, is steeped in speculative fiction and has unpredictable twists and turns . . . A breathtaking and unforgettable novel.”

—Debutiful

“Staples’ empathy for the entire town makes the characters clear and urgent . . . There’s a beauty to the unadorned prose . . . Poignant . . . This Town Sleeps is suffused with such humanity and the narrative is so well controlled that, however brief, This Town Sleeps remains a consistent pleasure.”

—MATTHEW CAPRIOLI, Lambda Literary

“This novel is a town map, a crime map, a dream map of Geshig, Minnesota, its violent histories, its denials and desires. Marion Lafournier is a perfect tour guide because he knows everybody’s secrets, and he sees clearly, even in the dark. Moody, a little noir, laced with the knife-blade humor only people who have been resisting genocide for five hundred years can pull off, and composed of riveting passages that refuse to look away, This Town Sleeps will haunt you with the beauty, despair, and hope of the characters whose lives it bears witness to. A rich and compelling debut.”

—PAM HOUSTON, author of Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country