Martha Moody - A Novel Book

RELEASE DATE - 17 DECEMBER 2020

At once a love story and a lush comic masterpiece, Martha Moody is a speculative western which embraces the ordinary and gritty details ― as well as the magic ― of women's lives in the old west.

"Susan Stinson’s substantial and delicious historical novel, Martha Moody, has been reissued by Small Beer Press, and it is certainly cause for celebration. . . . Stinson has invented substantial woman heroes who have agency and imaginations and she’s placed them into a historical novel in ways we had not seen before. . . . But the tale of Martha Moody is just part of this novel’s pleasure. Stinson’s language is joyful and buoyant. Her frame of reference includes liberal doses of Shakespeare, the bible, and Zane Grey, all of which make the novel such a complex and wonderful gift. Read and enjoy― preferably with a cup of tea and a luxuriously buttered biscuit nearby!” ―
Judith Katz, Lambda Literary

"A tale of longing and self identification and reconciliation. Amanda Linger pines for shop owner Martha Moody whose girth, sensuous folds of flesh and loving caresses pull Amanda out of the stasis of a loveless marriage...MARTHA MOODY is a tender exquisitely rendered story with strong characters, a sense of love and magic surrounding them, and one incredible cow."
Icon Magazine, Toronto

"Martha Moody, is a rich and complicated novel, nearly edible in its sensuous physicality."
Sojourner

"Stinson's follow-up to the utterly fantastic Fat Girl Dances with Rocks is so bloody good it made me want to run naked through a meadow.”
Time Out, London

"Here we have a story of love spurned, uncommonly well told, in language that is rich and strange, erotic and fanciful. Set against the backdrop of Western frontier life, it's a powerful tale of seeming betrayal, and the value of friendships between women. The best book yet from The Women's Press."
Gay Times, London

"Stinson's celebration of the love and friendship of women deserves a larger audience than one made up of only lesbian feminists."
Booklist

"One of Stinson's triumphs is to make Amanda's fairy-tale success as a writer seem completely plausible amid the vivid depiction of the grime and hard work of her life as first a farmer's wife, then a single woman struggling to survive on the small homestead."
Margot Livesey, Scotland On Sunday