Milk Blood Heat
Stories
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Moniz sings of Florida, girlhood, family, loss, and the glorious, ecstatic, devastating human body. A gorgeous debut from a wickedly talented new writer.” —Lauren Groff, New York Times–bestselling author
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Atlantic, TIME, Washington Independent Review of Books, Kirkus, Chicago Public Library, Library Journal, Literary Hub, Audible, Largehearted Boy, Entropy, Millions, and Tampa Bay Times
Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story in Milk Blood Heat delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning. These intimate portraits of people and relationships scour and soothe and blast a light on the nature of family, faith, forgiveness, consumption, and what we may, or may not, owe one another.
A thirteen-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend when an unexpected tragedy occurs; a woman recovering from a miscarriage finds herself unable to let go of her daughter—whose body parts she sees throughout her daily life; a teenager resists her family’s church and is accused of courting the devil; servers at a supper club cater to the insatiable cravings of their wealthy clientele; and two estranged siblings take a road-trip with their father’s ashes and are forced to face the troubling reality of how he continues to shape them.
Wise and subversive, spiritual and seductive, Milk Blood Heat forms an ouroboros of stories that bewitch with their truth, announcing the arrival of a bright new literary star.
“A fresh feel for the intensity and contradictions of girlhood sings across tough stories.” —Entertainment Weekly
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
There’s a river of emotion running through Dantiel W. Moniz’s moving short-story collection, ready to sweep you away at any moment. All set in Florida, these stories feel connected not just by their setting but by their frank and earnest themes of loss and regret. A teen girl tries to understand friendship in the midst of a tragedy. A pair of siblings struggle with the crater that their recently deceased father has left in their lives. Moniz writes with a subtle intensity that makes every character’s deep interior world feel palpable, real, and incredibly poignant. From a daughter going to painful lengths to not let her mother down to a woman engulfed in the surreal darkness of a tragic miscarriage, every tale sheds an intimate and insightful new light on the process of grief. Milk Blood Heat offers poetic glimpses at one of the most universal aspects of the human condition.
