Tantor Media

225 pages, $17.95

Review by Julienne Isaacs

The gloomy cover design of Fog Island Mountains, Michelle Bailat-Jones’ first novel, immediately appealed to me, ripe for a spate of late-winter melancholia: streaking rain over a black-and-green mountainous settlement, the whole layered with heavy titular fog.

But true melancholia denotes passivity or depression, and on that level Fog Island Mountains’ cover design is deceptive. The novel, which won the 2013 Christopher Doheny Award from the Center for Fiction, is self-contained and energetic, as whimsical as it is sad, as playful as it is serious. Continue reading →