"...Hale traverses mountain trails, excavates court records, and reflects on his family’s roots in the region to examine the unexpected connections between the two events. The result is a stark portrait of religion in America and the dark turns that faith can cause people to take."
"Laskar’s prose is timeless and understated...The tumultuous world she depicts is one on the precipice of real and frightening change, which stands in for the change and turmoil her protagonist is feeling as well...Both broadly political and personally intimate, MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR, is a complex, brave and powerful novel that will not be forgotten any time soon."
"As I wrote Midnight, at the War, I found myself returning to the on-the-ground experiences that shaped me as a journalist in the ’80s and ’90s, when newspapers still dominated and the American public understood civics thanks to robust public education requirements. Some of these moments I gave to my protagonist, Rita Das—both to anchor her in a familiar reality and to give myself a starting point as I explored her fictional world.”
“The novel’s strengths are the truths it surfaces about the meaning of 'news' for those of us born in the so-called American Century. . . While the events and conflicts of the novel are of their period, Laskar makes them resonate in our own violent present, just at the moment when the professional world she describes in lively detail is rapidly slipping away through cowardice, carelessness, and greed. In many ways, it’s already gone.”