Michael Perry exults in the power and elasticity of language. But not just of language, of the human spirit as well. Whether exhuming Elvis or staring down a convicted murderer, Perry's unerring, if bemused, eye paints all people as if their lives were epiphanies, which of course they are.

- Bill Friskics-Warren, The Nashville Scene

"Michael Perry’s commentaries…on Elvis, the seductions of summer, fighting fires in small towns, save-your-soul preachers, or anything else, are fun, smart, clear, and filled with good sense. Writing like this is hard to do. Perry makes it look easy."

- Dinty W. Moore, The Accidental Buddhist (Algonquin Books, 1997)

The best writers take us in tow to experience fully what their subjects experience and then ask, What do we make of this? Michael Perry is such a writer…he guides us to confront meaning in seemingly mundane things. And, often, just to laugh, clap our hands and surrender to mystery altogether…"

- Bill Hudgins, Road King Magazine

"Language dances across Perry’s pages, the clarity of poetry swinging one last time with the tough love practiced by those devoted to a dying art."

- Grant Alden, No Depression

"Michael Perry is like a sensitive, new-age Hemingway. He is good."