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We Shall Not All Sleep is an emotionally charged, beautifully written portrait of a father and son’s deep love for each other, and of the guilt and hauntings, both real and imagined, that threaten and challenge them. It’s very thoughtful and very fine.
Ron Hansen, author of Mariette in Ecstasy
Tony Woodlief has written an incantatory novel that seeps into your heart and will not let you go. We Shall Not All Sleep asks essential questions. When the present and past break you, when hauntings won’t release you, when mysteriously dark forces whisper in the wind, what do you do? The novel’s answer will shake you to your core, will make you wiser, will inspire you to believe in the power of love again, and will—as all great books do—change you. These characters and their lives—so human, so flawed, so beautiful—will stay with you long after the final page is turned.
Connie May Fowler, Author of Before Women had Wings
Tony Woodlief’s work is the unvarnished, resolute, hardwood prose of a man who writes with a determined honesty—as if he is staking ground in a battle; as if God is staring him in the face and he dare write nothing less. To read him is as bracing as it is rewarding.
A.G. Harmon, author of A House All Stilled
Among Woodlief’s many achievements in this story, one of the most salient may be its rescue of words like home, place, and community from the realm of the soothing anodyne—the restoration of their sense of intensity, urgency, and seriousness.
Woodlief artfully ties all these threads together, the earthly and the ethereal, the mundane and the miraculous. Through Daniel’s eyes, he explores the complexities of family, inheritance, and the enduring power of memory. The resulting story lingers like a ghost, filled with beauty, sorrow, and a persistent hope.