“A gripping, superb novel by a masterful storyteller. This belongs in the canon of contemporary American realism about small communities riven by tragedy, alongside The Sweet Hereafter and The House of Sand and Fog.”

Cara Blue Adams, author of You Never Get It Back

“An infinitely empathetic and tender study of both grief and community care, Butter Road is elegiac in its lyricism, thoughtful in its investigation of the histories we tend to, and profoundly optimistic in its belief in human kindness as a leveling response to inhuman cruelty. It’s a book that takes on so much: female rage, grief, and power. Mother and daughterhood. Individual and collective loss. Forgiveness and belief. But at its core, it’s also a book about what it means to keep going. ‘You show me the world in pieces, and also how the pieces fit together the longer we look. The longer we let ourselves see,’ Gilbert writes. Butter Road is a testament to that power of seeing wholeness in fracture, witness in absence, and surrender in survival. A powerful read.”

A.D. Lauren-Abunassar, author of Coriolis

“Butter Road is a thoughtful, nuanced exploration of shame, trauma, and the interlinked questions of what we owe the other members of our communities and what we owe ourselves. In lovely, sometimes lush language, Jaclyn Gilbert takes a close look at women seeking self-determination against very strong odds.”

Lily Meyer, author of Short War and The End of Romance

“In Jaclyn Gilbert’s luminous novel Butter Road, three women in an Amish community are haunted by grief. . . . . The persistence of grief and the aftereffects of trauma also permeate the  pages. Emma, for example, has visible scars from ‘the Happening,’ but she is not allowed to mention it. She also shows evidence of PTSD, while her mother believes that it is ‘better to be sad than to question God.’ Butter Road is a profound novel in which women grapple with their tragic pasts and moral dilemmas.”

Foreword Reviews