Whiskey & Ribbons

A PEN Open Book Award Nominee, Leesa Cross-Smith has been a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and Iowa Short Fiction Award. She is the author of the short story collection Every Kiss a War and lives in Louisville, KY.

"Beautiful and brutal, a gut-punch and a poem--I love this book. I love its characters, their complicated tangle of desire and grief. I love its craft, the back and forth dance between memory and possibility. I found myself talking aloud to Evangeline: Let go, I whispered. Or maybe she whispered it to me. I don't know. She's inside of me now, my head and my heart. I'll tell you what: Cross-Smith is a master." —Megan Stielstra, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life"Cross-Smith's thrilling debut novel, Whiskey and Ribbons, is as immediate and compelling as music. Her three lovers tell their stories, each turning over what we think we know, creating a moving triptych on love, desire, and grief, and the unexpected families life makes for us." —Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night"Leesa Cross-Smith's Whiskey & Ribbons is an unforgettable debut. The death of a police officer is at the heart of this powerful, moving polyphonic saga, and the stunning lyricism of the style only matches the heartbreaking poetry of its substance. Cross-Smith examines lovers, brothers, mothers, fathers and sons with such mammoth empathy that this is one of those books I find essential for making sense of our world today." —Porochista Khakpour, author of the novels Sons & Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion"In Whiskey & Ribbons, Leesa Cross Smith has given us a story of decent, ardent-hearted friends thrust into an unimaginable situation, and its survivors respond with equally surprising grace to impossibly difficult circumstances. Here is a slim, elegant novel that is brilliantly defiant in what it refuses to mention, and clear-eyed in its focus on something we all need more of: a close look at good people navigating unthinkable tragedy." —Bonnie Nadzam, author of Lion: a Novel"Written with the emotional impact of Ayobami Adebayo's Stay with Me, this work will appeal to lovers of literary fiction." —Library Journal"Whiskey & Ribbons is the kind of book you cancel everything to curl up with. Don’t even try to put it down; you won’t be able to. Leesa Cross-Smith writes with an open heart and a deft touch, crafting a beautiful meditation on marriage, family, and the hope within loss. I fell in love with these characters. I joined them in their heartbreak, their lust, their yearning, and I missed them after the last page." —Lindsay Hunter, author of Eat Only When You're Hungry“Leesa Cross-Smith is a consummate storyteller who uses her formidable talents to tell the oft-overlooked stories of people living in that great swath of place between the left and right coasts." —Roxane Gay, author Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body and Bad Femininst