“Review: ‘In the Middle of Many Mountains’ by Nahal Suzanne Jamir” | [FULL TEXT]
Minneapolis Star Tribune | August 8, 2013

Suicides and mental illness are a large part of these stories, but in how they influence survivors rather than in attempting a portrait of unfathomable mental states. Perhaps this is Jamir’s prime accomplishment, creating stories in which we equate terrible loss with a kind of creative liberation…..”
—Heid E. Erdrich

Praise

“Jamir has written a profoundly beautiful book about the persistence of collective memory—how we lonely humans trapped in a single life seek the wisdom handed down to us and chafe against it, too.” 
—Debra Monroe, author of On the Outskirts of Normal and My Unsentimental Education

“Nahal Suzanne Jamir is a startling writer. Her work defies simple categorization, and I find myself a little breathless sometimes, story to story, page to page, line to line. This is a wonderful, boldly experimental debut by a unique new voice. Here is a brilliant mind at work. Make way!”
—Julianna Baggott, author of the Pure trilogy

“Jamir is a gatherer of story. In this collection, we are given the chance to join her, to gather and examine story from every angle, from every corner…..But Jamir doesn’t sit in an armchair simply discussing the elements of story—she gives us an abundance of the real thing—magical examples of stories that do help us remember, that do make us less lonely, that do remind us of our own truths.”
—Brianna Van Dyke, editor of Ruminate Magazine

“I chose Jamir’s precious, sad story of her mother — specifically of her mother’s poor eye health and of what comes with the ability to see and not to — because the prose so deftly moves me from the unknown to the known, the prophesied and the predicted but unfulfilled….Just as I believe I know where Jamir is leading me next, possible prophecies piling up like choose-your-own-adventure pathways, reality takes a different turn…..Jamir makes my eyes, and unmakes them, giving me sight in many forms.”
—Samantha Bares, MQR Staff

“In ‘Killing Trees,’ Nahal Suzanne Jamir illuminates for us the realities of having a peripatetic upbringing. She takes us through Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Florida, and the poetic descriptions her writer’s eye has chosen to give us dramatize what it means to be a person who is a survivor.”
—Robert Clark Young, CNF Editor, Connotation Press