Praise for Sarah Canary

“Unforgettable…incandescent…bewitching.” —LA Times Book Review

“An utterly original, ground-breaking book…powerful and perplexing and undeniable—a work of art.” —The Chicago Tribune

“Sarah Canary creates that feeling of radiant strangeness…It is ostensibly an account of the adventures of a Chinese railway worker and a special drifter in a long black dress. But Ms. Fowler’s willingness to take detours, her unapologetic delight in the odd historical fact, her shadowy humor and the elegant unruliness of her language, all elevate her story from the picaresque to the grand.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Remarkable...A fascinating romp, in which actual events are so cleverly intertwined with the author’s fanciful inventions that the reader grows unsure which to disbelieve.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Sarah Canary is certainly an enchanted and enchanting narrative, and Karen Fowler has found her way from the details of what we take to be our history, our past, to the legend that is our true present. Her powers of evocation of character and consequence, her storytelling gifts, are exhilarating, and she has given us, at the beginning of her writing life, a work with the suggestive authority—and the evanescent, haunting power—of myth.”—W.S. Merwin

“Remarkable...A larger than life, magical realist Western that is funny, mysterious, and harrowing by turns...Its imaginative virtuosity and stylistic resources announce Karen Joy Fowler as a major writer.”—New York Newsday

“Part adventure story, part history lesson, part flight of marvelous fancy, Sarah Canary is among the very best novels...”—San Diego Tribune

“Powerful…Touching…Hilarious…Fowler interweaves historical fact and fiction, creating almost real world, somewhat along the lines of E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime.”—Locus

“[A] quirky, original tale...marvelously framed in the events and scenery of the Northwest frontier.”—San Antonio Express-News