"Throughout the tumult, all three members of the Walker family discover reserves of unexpected courage and resolve—and one can’t help believing that if most of the other characters carried within them the empathy and grace displayed by the author of this compelling postbellum saga, most of the awful things that happen to them and their immediate surroundings would have been avoided." - Kirkus
"A fine, lyrical novel, impressive at the level of the sentence, and in its complex interweaving of the grand and the intimate, of the personal and political." - Alex Preston, The Guardian
"Beautiful... An instant classic... This book is profound." - Jenna Bush Hager, Wall Street Journal
"As I read this masterful novel I kept thinking--this young 29-year-old is a first-time author, so how did he do this?... As the best writers can do, Nathan takes us back in time, and helps us to feel we are right there with Prentiss and Landry as they get their first taste of freedom. I rooted for them, and feared for them too." - Oprah Winfrey
"An extraordinary debut novel . . . Harris expertly introduces explosive plot twists across parallel threads . . . There's an elegant interplay among all facets of the narrative that at once raises the stakes for all the characters while gesturing toward a larger world outside Old Ox. The overall effect is a dazzling world-building that makes the relatively compact novel feel much larger . . . Harris manages to weave emotion into the smallest of moments . . . The novel asks us to consider white-supremacist ideology not as a uniquely Southern phenomenon, but as an uncomfortable truth and feature of the entire American endeavor, especially of the criminal justice system. Old Ox is in Georgia, but it is also everywhere today. Harris writes with the confidence and command of a seasoned master of the craft. And, of course, the magic of his sentences is in the details--everything is historically accurate and painstakingly researched, whether he's describing the reprieve of a fresh tick mattress or the complexity of growing peanuts in Georgia soil. This novel is simply the best I have read in years." - Daniel Peña, Texas Monthly
"Harris's characters are multifaceted, absorbing, and extraordinarily well-developed. They transport the reader into a difficult time of complex social problems, with situations that elevate the tension with each turn of the page. As more layers of the story unfold, Harris's captivating and shrewd prose dissects individual motives, revealing vulnerabilities and thereby exposing the characters for who they are, and what they have become. Harris creates a fascinating and compelling look into the Civil War era by taking a well-known aspect of the period, the Emancipation Proclamation, and candidly depicting the confusion in the aftermath of the new law... In a tumultuous time of instability and uncertainty, Nathan Harris brings to the foreground humanity's aptitude for survival, compassion, and goodwill even in their darkest hour." - Donna Everhart, New York Journal of Books
"Harris's lucid prose and vivid characterization illustrate a community at war with itself, poisoned by pride and mired in racial and sexual bigotry. Prentiss and Landry are technically free, but they remain trapped by a lifetime of blighted hopes and broken promises. Reconstruction will prove to be yet another lie. Harris's first novel is an aching chronicle of loss, cruelty, and love in the wake of community devastation." - Lesley Williams, Booklist
"Richly imagined... A deeply compassionate debut." - Robert Faires, Austin Chronicle
"Harris's debut novel is remarkable; that he's only 29 is miraculous. His prose is burnished with an antique patina that evokes the mid-19th century. And he explores this liminal moment in our history with extraordinary sensitivity to the range of responses from Black and White Americans contending with a revolutionary ideal of personhood... All of this is drawn with gorgeous fidelity to these cautious characters, struggling to remake the world, or at least this little patch of it... Harris stacks the timbers of this plot deliberately, and the moment a spark alights, the whole structure begins to burn hot... What's most impressive about Harris's novel is how he attends to the lives of these peculiar people while capturing the tectonic tensions at play in the American South." - Ron Charles, Washington Post
