"The reader experiencing the palpable world of Refrigerator Church may bear witness to the authentic religious life of its inhabitants . This is work of formidable beauty and intelligence." -- Jack Pulaski, author of Love's Labours "These astonishing stories are a synthesis of the everyday and the extraordinary . Each story is written in the most passionate, breathtaking prose by a writer who is above all else a brilliant poet." -- Kiana Davenport, author of Shark Dialogues "The improvisational jazz rifts of Nelson's fast-paced, staccato prose take the measure of relationships of men to men; men to women; men to the sea, to love and war, to the soil, and to the farms and animals of the northeastern coast of Maine and the North Shore of Oahu--our furthest states and most extreme landscapes, both literally and metaphorically." -- Laura Marello, author of Maniac Drifter "Blending the rural angst of Carver, the absurdist dialogue of Beckett, and the hilarious religiosity of O'Connor, Nelson's equally quirky but thoroughly original voice brings to life the marginal denizens of a sparsely populated coastal community of grizzled fishermen, brilliantly mad farmwives, toothless ancient mariners, and would-be writers." -- Perle Besserman, author of The Kabbalah Master.