Body and Bread (Cuba) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Years after her brother Sam’s suicide, as her family prepares to sell their farm, anthropologist Sarah Pelton digs into the secrets Sam left behind while attempting to live fully without him.
Abbe Wright - O, Oprah's Magazine

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Body and Bread is a beautiful examination of family dynamics in the wake of suffering, and the ways that grief continues to shape our lives far beyond the death of a loved one.
Pam Johnston - San Antonio Express-News


Sam was her polestar, the big brother Sarah always looked up to, the one who could be a little wild, a little defiant, a little mysterious.... For Sam, however, the quest would not end until he had physically destroyed the source of his self-inflicted pain... Despite its erratic narrative arc...Cuba’s piercing coming-of-age saga vibrates with youthful yearnings. —Carol Haggas
Booklist


Like every person, every family contains contradictions, oppositions. Think of the generally quiet, sober couple who produce a jokester or chatterbox. Or the child who in church looks past her brothers’ and sisters’ bowed heads, searching for fellow doubters. Such contradictions may develop into deep conflicts or become a source of wonder, even pride. Either way, they can be a powerful force; that's just one truth examined in Nan Cuba's sweeping, carefully observed debut novel, Body and Bread.
Beth Castrodale - Small Press Picks


The plot’s literal events center on young Sarah’s gradual estrangement from her family and adult Sarah’s efforts to help her late brother’s widow and child. But as with Salinger, Cuba’s plot is almost incidental. Her writerly strengths lie in morsels of feeling perfectly put, and experiences rendered with unsettling aptness.
Emily dePrang - Texas Observer


Beautifully written, hauntingly true, expertly spanning multiple cultures, time periods and philosophies, Body and Bread is nothing short of a tour-de-force. You will be transported. You will be transformed.
David Bowles - Monitor (McAllen, Texas)


Like Munro, Cuba knows how to immerse us in the eloquent, intelligent, and unpretentious consciousness of a woman whose fidelity is to the unraveling of the many layers of truth that lay hidden, like ancient civilizations, beneath the surface of time. This truth scavenging makes Body and Bread an emotionally, ethically, and aesthetically riveting experience.
K.L. Cook, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment


Nan Cuba’s Body and Bread could be the quintessential Texas novel for the twenty-first century. Body and Bread focuses on several generations of the Pelton family, their relationship to Texas, and those issues of family, tragedy, illness, and kinship. Like Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Cuba’s Texas is rich with history and tainted with deceptions revolving around slavery and race relations in the South.
Catherine Kasper - Texas Books in Review