SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Sister Mine

Be prepared for an emotional roller-coaster ride with this latest from O'Dell. . . O'Dell successfully combines the story of negligent coal-mine owners and unfortunate, disabled, or dead miners with Shae-Lynn's own troubled past in this intense, racy, raucous, and often hilarious novel . . . she also packs this gripping tale with loads of action, intrigue, and suspense.
-- Library Journal

A masterfully unfolded, absolutely engrossing story as smart and sassy as it is wise…love [is] at the heart of it all, in crisp, insightful prose that sweeps the reader along. A knockout.
-– Booklist (starred review)

Narrator Shae-Lynn Penrose, the author’s first female protagonist, is a ballsy, sassy delight…Many wonderful scenes bear witness for people too often left voiceless in American Literature.
-- Kirkus

O’Dell, whose debut, Back Roads, was an Oprah pick, returns with a terrific third novel set in a Pennsylvania coal country of broken families, altercations and smalltown coping…O’Dell demonstrates her mastery of set-piece dialogue, reeling off stingingly acute encounters that are as funny as they can be crushingly sad… crackles with conflict and a deep understanding of the complications and burdens that follow attachment, sex, love and kinship.
-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Tawni O'Dell is a great American storyteller. Sister Mine is hilarious and poignant, the details glitter like King Cole from a writer who knows it well. This is a story of family, friendship, and how secrets can bury us or redeem us . . . in the gifted hands of Tawni O'Dell, you can bet on redemption.
-- Adriana Trigiani, author of Home to Big Stone Gap

SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Coal Run

Entertainment Weekly
. . . This is rich, compassionate storytelling.

Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
O'Dell explores the dynamics of a tiny Pennsylvania coal-mining town in her probing, heartbreaking second novel . . . This is a fierce, sharply drawn and richly sympathetic tribute to working-class America.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2004
Triumphantly fulfilling the promise of her bestselling debut (Back Roads, 2000,) O’Dell examines the tangled, enduring bonds of family and community in a Pennsylvania mining town . . . a searing tragic vision of working-class people whose dignity comes from stoically doing their jobs . . . powerful and uncompromising, yet radiant with love: this one’s pretty close to a masterpiece.

Booklist (starred review)
A glorious story of love and loss, of achievement and disappointment, of hope and despair . . . The novel takes place over the course of only one week, yet O'Dell manages to give the story an epic dimension.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In her utterly compelling second novel, Tawni O'Dell chronicles her characters' struggles with passion and wisdom . . .

The Denver Post
Tawni O'Dell illuminates timeless issues with keen insight . . . She pulls disparate threads together, weaving a powerful yet subtle tapestry of one man's tentative journey toward the personal understanding and acceptance that must precede redeption.

SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Back Roads

The New York Times Book Review - March 12, 2000
Tense, conflicted and involving, O'Dell's novel deftly captures the voice of a teenage boy who's in trouble and facing profound challenges...

Orlando Sentinel
A vivid writing style that makes for enjoyment reading.

San Diego Union
O'Dell offers up a remarkable tale.

New York Newsday
... O'Dell has tackled the real stuff of stories, and she's done it with compassion and a unique voice.

Los Angeles Times
O'Dell's storytelling has natural flair.

Kirkus Reviews
A strong, thoughtful first novel that hews to time-honored fiction traditions, rooting a voyage of personal discovery in beautifully rendered particulars of character and place. We don't know exactly what kind of trouble 20-year-old Harley Altmyer is in when the story begins with him being interrogated by police officers, but we quickly learn that he's seen plenty of bad times already. Its been two years since his mother went to jail for shooting his father, and two now dead-end jobs are barely enough to support Harley and his three younger sisters in a dying western Pennsylvania town poisoned and abandoned by the coal industry. Sixteen-year-old Amber screws every guy in sight, daring Harley to do anything about it. Twelve-year-old Misty, favorite of their deceased father which means he beat her more than he did the other three seems not to care about anything. Six-year-old Jody writes notes to herself (FEED DINUSORS/ EAT BREKFIST) and keeps secrets she's not quite aware she possesses. Harley keeps his court-mandated appointments with a psychiatrist, but resists her efforts to make him open up. Smart and sharply funny, though hardly anyone catches his irony, Harley is trapped in the man's role he knows is a crock but can't let go. O'Dell does an impressive job of getting inside the head of a member of the opposite sex, creating a first-person narration of painful veracity as Harley rants against his mother and defends his father (He didn't like his job, but he went to it every day . . . . He was a flesh-and-blood man who couldn't stand it if you spilled something). The dysfunctional dynamics of a family scarred by domestic violence and incestuous longings lead to some luridly melodramatic twists, but the author's compassion and love for her characters shine throughout. When O'Dells plotting achieves the maturity of her character development, she's going to write a really extraordinary novel. This one is pretty darn good. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
-- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.