“I can’t stop thinking about this book. It’s a haunting story that burrows under your skin like an insect laying eggs that hatch within you in the middle of the night. Hicks’s mesmerizing imagery kept me turning the pages and asking myself ‘How is this book happening? What sort of literary witchcraft am I witnessing?’ ”—Maurice Broaddus, author of Buffalo Soldier and The Usual Suspects
“A tour de force of the imagination. Hicks has created a world that is beautifully and brutally surreal and yet, at the same time, Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones stands as a hyper-realistic psychological portrait of the death of the American factory town. My own identity as an American was disturbed and changed by this novel; some dormant understanding was shaken awake. This is a stunning and profound debut.” —Julianna Baggott, best-selling author of New York Times Notable Book Pure
“Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones is a breathless wonder of a debut novel. Amid robots and a city of pigs and residents haunted by their own personal ghosts, Micah Dean Hicks explores economic uncertainty, the violence of bigotry and hate, and the tremendous weight of the past. In Swine Hill, no one escapes the horrors of grief. And yet this is a novel infused with hope, and with the most gorgeous sentences evoking the sublime wonder of this world. Hicks is a magician with words and has written a spellbinding, haunting, and necessary book.” —Anne Valente, author of Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down
“Hicks’s debut novel is a thoughtful tour of the rotted and haunted heart of America. Highly recommended.” —Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Jeremiah Tolbert
“In Break the Bodies Haunt the Bones, Micah Dean Hicks has crafted a haunting story with multi-generational appeal, where the very real horror of poverty meets supernatural horror, and social issues like xenophobia, racism, and economic anxiety are addressed organically through allegory and gripping storytelling. I finished this book three nights ago and still feel the chill of Swine Hill in my bones.” —Chris L. Terry, author of Black Card and Zero Fade