Flight Risk

Joy Castro is the award-winning author of the post-Katrina New Orleans literary thrillers Hell or High Water, which received the Nebraska Book Award, and Nearer Home; the story collection How Winter Began; the memoir The Truth Book; and the essay collection Island of Bones, which received the International Latino Book Award. She is also the editor of the anthology Family Trouble and served as the guest judge of CRAFT’s first Creative Nonfiction Award. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Senses of Cinema, Salon, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Brevity, Afro-Hispanic Review, and elsewhere. A former writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University, she is currently the Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

“…the characters and emotions portrayed make this well worth reading.” —Booklist“In Flight Risk, [Castro] does an excellent job at balancing the ambiguity of her characters’ choices, while challenging readers’ expectations. Raised in West Virginia, she shows her insider knowledge in the concerns and interactions of the characters.” —Los Angeles Review of Books“Joy Castro’s writing is like watching an Acapulco cliff diver. It takes my breath away every time.” —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street“Funny, sexy, and transfixing, Joy Castro’s Flight Risk is a meditation on love, marriage, art, family, womanhood—and therefore, life itself. Castro skillfully builds tension, and the slow intensity with which the plot’s arc forms gives the novel its exquisite and powerful impact.” —Chigozie Obioma, author of the Booker-short-listed novel An Orchestra of Minorities“Completely captivating. Part Patricia Highsmith, part Mexican Gothic, part Daphne du Maurier, Joy Castro’s Flight Risk is my favorite kind of story: one in which an outsider, dodging and weaving among insiders, stirs up tension, intrigue, and suspicion. With raw energy and sharp storytelling, Flight Risk is a novel about light and shadow, and I found myself craving its every twist.” —Timothy Schaffert, author of The Perfume Thief“From the stunning opening lines of Joy Castro’s Flight Risk, we know we’re in the hands of a master storyteller, and it held me captive until the final page. With writing so evocative I could taste her words, Castro has wrought a sharply observed love story with a social conscience—an investigation of class, family, and the many ways we get each other wrong.” —Jennifer Steil, author of Exile Music“Flight Risk is a compelling, gritty portrait of class in America. Joy Castro traffics the rural-urban divide with complexity and compassion. The protagonist, Isabel Morales, an outsider turned artist, guides the reader through poverty, wealth, and the beating heart of our political divide as she reclaims her roots in coal-country West Virginia while reconciling the privileged life she’s built in Chicago. This is outlaw fiction at its best.” —Melissa Scholes Young, author of The Hive“A deftly intelligent literary thriller, Flight Risk is that rarest of beasts—beautifully written yet a real page-turner, too. Wonderful.” —S. J. Watson, author of the international bestseller Before I Go to Sleep“Joy Castro writes with a balanced urgency—elegant sentences tempered with grace and intelligence, clear and gripping character arcs and story lines—and with a depth and dimension that leans into the transformative. Another strong book.” —Chris Abani, author of The Secret History of Las Vegas and Song for Night