"In CITIES, Elizabeth Thorpe compresses entire novels into short-short stories. With the subtlest descriptions of how someone lifts her hair off her neck, sees a plate, or looks up at sails, Thorpe creates emotional landscapes: real people. This is a book to be savored, and read over and over again, but as John L'Heureux notes, 'no matter how many times we read it, we're not quite through it yet.' Yet while the characters are under constant pressure, they find respite in the natural world-moments of calm in the sky, the sea, the clouds, the woods, 'the wind in the trees like a freight train.' As another character finds: 'For a moment, she is buoyed.'-Jordan Hartt, author of LEAP