“On the tiny Isle aux Chiens in the coastal curve just east of the tripartite mouth of the Mississippi live the witty, resourceful, sometimes inscrutable, always courageous descendants of Louisiana’s French-Spanish pioneers. Depending upon the fickle Gulf for their livelihood, they have no illusions about the hazards of life or fortune. They watch, they quarrel, and they love—always beneath a hard blue sky; but they accept with bravery and zest whatever a day brings.”—Library Journal

“[Grau’s] fine gift for description and her honest eye for her islanders—for their pride, self-reliance and courage, as well as their touches of sloth, prurience and plain human cussedness—give them and their island the right to life. Paramountly, Grau’s portrait of Annie Landry, as it develops throughout the book, is a frank and compassionate study of adolescence. . . . The genuine flash and cutting edge of art.”—New York Times

“This island world, alien and apart and tempered by the whims of the sea and the sky, has a somnolent fascination; the vitality and the violence of the lives it shapes are retained and reflected with a very realistic but unquestionable lyricism.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Grau recreates in all its dimensions the singular life of an inbred, almost isolated little world.”—Atlantic Monthly