Very, very pleased to announce that The Returned has grabbed a starred review from Booklist!  …Huzzah!  Deeply honored and excited that they enjoyed the book so much!  Review below:

-j

“In this sparely written first novel, poet Mott posits intriguing questions about our uneasy relationship with
death. Harold and Lucille Hargrave are stunned to find their eight-year-old son, Jacob—decades after the
boy’s death by drowning—standing on their front porch, along with Martin Bellamy, a government agent
for the International Bureau of the Returned. All over the globe, the dead are returning to their families,
causing massive confusion and a pervasive anxiety that countries will run out of room and the resources to
care for the enlarging population. And the Hargrave family seems to encompass the spectrum of emotions
that greet the Returned, as Lucille is overjoyed to once again cook and care for her son, despite her
advanced years, while Harold is afraid of all the emotions that his son stirs up, recalling anew the anguish
and grief he thought he had finally laid to rest. Mott brings a singularly eloquent voice to this elegiac
novel, which not only fearlessly tackles larger questions about mortality but also insightfully captures
life’s simpler moments, as when a father and son earnestly discuss the finer points of how to tell a good
joke. A beautiful meditation on what it means to be human.”