“Blood Clay is both a tense, plot-driven story about complicated issues of race and guilt, and a meditation on solitude, history, and ways of living. The writing is wonderfully fluid, visual, and vivid, but above all these felicities of style, I’m most impressed by Valerie Nieman's candid treatment of difficult subject matter and the broadness of her canvas. It is thoughtful, brave, intelligent.” — Jane Alison, author of The Sisters Antipodes: A Memoir
"There's violence here, and steamy sex, and strangeness aplenty, but Valerie Nieman's Blood Clay is no rural geekshow. This is a mature novel, full of living, breathing beings from whose passionate lives it is impossible to turn away. Books this fine are very rare indeed." — Pinckney Benedict, author of Miracle Boy and Other Stories
“Blood Clay is a profoundly moving and beautifully written novel about a community torn apart by tragedy. Valerie Nieman is a writer of remarkable talent, and she has given us a book that, once read, will be hard for any reader to forget.” — Ron Rash, author of Serena
“Blood Clay has it all. The novel’s audacious and gripping plot begins with a shotgun-blast of a scene in which a horrible dog attack sends reverberations through a small North Carolina town and the rest of the book. Val Nieman has written what is destined to become a classic novel of Southern life. I love this book.” — Elizabeth Stuckey-French, author of The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady
