"This sad, odd, thrilling novel is unlike anything I've ever read. It is peopled by the vulnerable—frail bodies, wild minds—individuals with great lasting power who are capable of surprising tenderness and the quiet, surpassing cruelties of home."—Noy Holland, contest judge and author of Swim for the Little One First
"In a world not so far or long away, but every bit as distant as if it were another universe, A History of Hands imagines Depression-era California as it has never been imagined before. Here, Rod Val Moore takes up the grotesque tradition of Nathaniel West to turn his eye toward California's sparsely populated Central Coast, where drifters, charlatans, and earnest naïfs cross paths to transform forever the life of one isolated boy with troublesome hands. But what really sets this book apart is the knock-dead gorgeous writing which, like the characters and landscape it depicts, seems almost to come from another world–one that shares uncanny parallels with our own and that refracts them back at us with something between the microscopic precision of science and the skewed eloquence of translation. A History of Hands is a miracle tonic all its own, and you will not want to miss it."—Katharine Haake, author of The Time of Quarantine
"Rod Val Moore's A History of Hands is a paralytically funny run through the labyrinths of ontology, consciousness, imagination, illness, family, plight; like Omensetter's Luck meets The Simpsons, only Bart is paralyzed. A History of Hands quirks and hurts, successfully rising precariously above pathos through humor and philosophy, where the protagonist/victim Virge, alluding to Virgil, lies on the verge with his family, on the cusps of cruelty, affection, antagonism, and love. On top of that, the language is thick and layered and fabulous, it sucks you in and blows you out like prana, like breath. This is a novel of subtlety, complexity, humor, and wonder."—Chuck Rosenthal, author of Loop's Progress and West of Eden
"Imagine a collaboration between Henry Roth, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Rudolph Wurlitzer . . . only less derivative than that description suggests, more antic, and uniquely poignant."—Entropy Magazine