Glass/Fire

"Against a backdrop of insistent rain and tide, Pattnaik weaves the lives of three daughters after the family reverse migrates from New Jersey to their ancestral house, Eddy Villa, in a small town near the coast. Pattnaik skillfully immerses the reader in the daughters' formidable struggles and incremental triumphs over years. What a wonderful experience to walk beside these characters as they forge lives of meaning and purpose. The novella is beautifully bookended with images of glass in all its states."

-Patricia Q. Bidar, author of Wild Plums and Pardon Me for Moonwalking

"Lush, vivid, pregnant with metaphors-Mandira Patnaik's novella-in-flash, Glass/Fire, reads like captured sparkling images of three intertwined female lives, light as a feather, yet tracing a rarely-told and weighty flight-arc of reverse migration. Its punctum is that minutely-observed moment of exquisite tension, that throwaway detail unlocking an expanse of yearning. Boundaries, as in the stroke dividing glass and fire, act as a threshold to becoming. Enter the wider natural world like a monsoon, these miniature stories that necklace your heart and break it in such tender ways. This novella-in-flash sears itself into your consciousness like a ballad on fire."

- Elaine Chiew, author of The Light Between Us and The Heartsick Diaspora