*Sister Golden Hair chosen as an Okra Pick by Southern Independent Booksellers Association
*Flavorwire picks Sister Golden Hair as one of the 50 best independent fiction and poetry books of 2014
“Steinke’s narrator, Jesse, is both unforgettably unique and a quintessential adolescent girl . . . Jesse’s naive admiration . . . and her chameleonlike reaction to whomever she attaches herself to create a painfully true account of a tough phase of life made more so by the disillusions of the time. But as Jesse observes these characters’ hopelessness, she herself becomes more defined—perhaps more the guitarist than the girl in the song.”
—Booklist
"Many authors bounce the sacred and profane against each another; Steinke blasts them together with the intensity of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC)....Part detective, part medium, part anthropologist, the Steinke heroine is pure bleeding whip-smart heart—voracious for pleasure but too wise to look away from ugliness. In her new novel Sister Golden Hair, the off-kilter quest Steinke has chronicled across her body of work gains a unifying voice..."
—Bookforum
"A novelistic exploration of girlhood and shifting friendships mired in the vastly shifting world of the seventies South."
—Vogue (Vogue's Best Under-the-Radar Books for Fall)
"Sister Golden Hair, with its story of a former minister's daughter finding herself in the suburban South of 40 years ago, feels like an American coming-of-age classic, a '70s period piece that should have already been written but actually hasn't — not with a sensitivity, candor and energy that is all Steinke."
—Los Angeles Times
"Swift, sharply comic and often heartbreaking, Sister Golden Hair is a wonderful novel. . . .Steinke’s edgy characters and their concern with whatever force drives the known world and the unseen world bring power and excitement to this lovely book."
—Miami Herald
"Sister Golden Hair [...] captivates in its strange mixture of the mundane and the fantastical, the pop-cultural and the metaphysical, and it’s very much in the mode of Steinke’s earlier, memorable novel Jesus Saves..."
—Memphis Flyer
"Sister is Steinke’s beautifully written chronicle of girlhood in the ’70s, a time when things were changing, albeit slowly, for women in America. It’s a lush depiction of the decade, complete with fully interwoven details about the music, fashion, and politics of the era, but from the earnest and honest eyes of a curious teenaged girl."
—Bustle
"This book is one of the best of those that bring together several emerging trends: novella-length chapters, autobiographical and autofictional elements, and the maturation of the still-forming mind."
—Flavorwire
"Littered with pop culture, verging on the edge of danger, Jesse’s story in Sister Golden Hair is a mirror not just of a girl growing up in the 1970s, but of what it’s like to grow and change and try to comprehend a whole new world of influences. It’s the story of every daughter born from 1970 on."
—Corduroy Books
"Here's a novel that gathers stunning momentum with every tiny perfect detail, and tracks the feelings of a girl and the mood of a country with the surest touch. With Sister Golden Hair, Darcey Steinke proves yet again that she is one of our most stylish and intense novelists."
—Sam Lipsyte, author of The Fun Parts
“[Sister Golden Hair] absolutely dazzled me . . . a searingly accurate portrait of a time and a way of thinking—a moment in American history when gleeful abandon had decayed into regular old abandon, and when new cultural freedoms suddenly seemed more dangerous than intoxicating.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things
"Sister Golden Hair is an indelible portrait of a place and time; an argument for adolescent girlhood as a fulcrum for the human predicament; and sentence by sentence, a brilliant piece of writing suffused with all Steinke's characteristic wit, darkness, and profundity. As always, Steinke shifts the terms: it isn't our capacity to be saved or go down in flames that's most at stake, but our willingess to hold the dangerous, bleak, exciting, full mess of life up to the light, to behold and bear its mottled grace. Steinke has become a master at this fearless beholding, and I trust her deeply, will go wherever she wants to take me."
—Maggie Nelson, author of Bluets
"A daring and arrestingly beautiful novel about what it’s like to walk through the world, wide awake, taking in radiant and terrifying messages about everything around you."
—Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation
Praise for Darcey Steinke
“I became riveted by Steinke's tone, a steady, lovely, hallowed, patient, things-in-themselves hum…[Easter Everywhere is] a delicately wrought little volume…This is a beautiful book.” —New York Times Book Review
“If the novel had an essence (eau de roman), a pithy core, Darcey Steinke would be its genius.” —Los Angeles Times
"Steinke writes some beautifully mystical descriptions of sexual encounters, and the conjunction of sex and the spirit, bodies and souls, is fascinating." —Washington Post
"Steinke's idiosyncratic, unsentimental fourth novel continues her examination of sexual and religious obsession...all the characters struggle to establish a relationship with God through contact with those around them, but Steinke's prose repeatedly hints at the divine in tangible things."—The New Yorker
"Erotic . . . beautifully crafted prose."—Time magazine
"Few authors understand America's darkest fears and obsessions like Darcey Steinke."—Village Voice
Easter Everywhere is an excellent account of a writer going head-to-head with the divine and finding some inner quiet—even in the darkest corners of her imagination.” —Time Out New York
“Darcey Steinke certainly knows her way around characters and plot...it’s a joy to see her inner life finally exposed.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Steinke unflinchingly recounts years of disillusionment in her stumble back toward faith.” —Entertainment Weekly
“She drew this atheist reader deep into her devotional tale, seducing with prose that is rich and filling, with images that are startling and deep.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
