A searing debut novel that follows three generations—fractured by murder, seeking redemption—in fictional Pitchlynn, Mississippi.An Iraq war veteran turned small town homemaker, Colleen works hard to keep her deployment behind her—until pregnancy brings her buried trauma to the surface. She hides her mounting anxiety from her husband, Derby, who is in turn preoccupied with the media frenzy surrounding the long-overdue retrial of his father, Hare Hobbs, for a civil rights–era murder.As Colleen and Derby prepare for the arrival of their twins, they must confront what it will mean to parent children in Pitchlynn, a town whose upscale marketing rebrand will reframe its antebellum estates . . . and erase any legacy of violence. And as the trial draws near, questions of Hare's guilt only magnify these tensions of class and race, tied always to the land and who can call it their own.Twisting together individual and...

For readers of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk and Redeployment, a searing debut exploring the lives of veterans returning to their homes in the South.Lacerating and lyrical, We Come to Our Senses centers on men and women affected by combat directly and tangentially, and the peculiar legacies of war. The story "Evie M." is about a vet turned office clerk whose petty neuroses derail even her suicide; in "We Come to Our Senses," a hip young couple leaves the city for the sticks, trading film festivals for firearms; in "Colleen" a woman redeploys to her Mississippi hometown, and confronts the superior who abused her at war; and in "11/19/98" a couple obsesses over sitcoms and retail catalogs, extracting joy and deeper meaning. The story "Hers" is about the sexual politics of a combat zone.