Earthquake

Susan Barnes spent her childhood in Alaska and Massachusetts. After years of traveling with her children, Kate and Ezra, she received her MFA in Painting from SUNY, Buffalo. She taught for several years at Cooper Union before moving to Pouch Cove, Newfoundland. She now lives and works in Biddeford, Maine.

“The second I finished reading Earthquake, without even thinking, I began reading it again. The prose has a lovely tidal pull. It's lyrical, vivid, stark, beautifully contained, dark, unblinking, and lulling. A pure and durable stream of coming-of-age vignettes. Earthquake is lush yet gritty, wondrously detailed yet written so cleanly. The book is a gem, and I use the term gem almost literally. The prose seems to have found its ideal voice, like a diamond formed at great depths in the earth, under intense pressure, and is fully alive, a sparkling artifact of compressed energy.”—Amy Gerstler