Stand up women everywhere! Fantastic and inspirational! – 2017 Maxy Awards, Best Fiction Winner
With themes of reproductive rights and feminism, this multi-generational novel presents three women whose overlapping lives weave a tapestry as rich and complex as the female experience itself.
Marvelous. Honest. Generous. From the first story to the last, “By the Wayside” catches your attention and demands that you give into its every whirl. Each character unfolds with a precision that will have you wondering how Parrish managed to create such real-to-the-bones people within a world that captivates you with ease. – Unsolicited Press
Anne Leigh Parrish’s fine debut novel, What Is Found, What Is Lost, is a moving and graceful tale that delves deeply into the histories of two sisters, Freddie and Holly. The women reinvent their lives and fortunes as adults, but despite new identities, find they must learn to navigate the complex network of family ties and family lies that bind them together. Parrish, in clear, deft prose, explores the meaning of motherhood, faith, loyalty, and tenderness; effortless, she carries her readers through four generations of one family’s checkered history of love. – Mary Akers, author of Bones Of An Inland Sea
Parrish weaves linked, darkly humorous tales of aging, death, love and alcoholism using the gothic tropes of Southern literary fiction. A successful collage of linked stories set in a rich, dysfunctional world. – Kirkus Reviews
Anne Leigh Parrish has written a collection of stories that deserve a place on the shelf next to Raymond Carver, Tom Boyle, Richard Bausch, and other investigators of lives gone wrong. Parrish writes with painful clarity about marriages turned sour, children at war with their parents, women drifting from one damaging relationship to another, and about unexpected acts of generosity-an impoverished woman giving her battered piano to a priest who had befriended her, a schoolgirl who bribes a boy to pretend an interest in an overweight classmate, then finds that her kindness has disastrous consequences. These are potent and artful stories, from a writer who warrants attentive reading. – C. Michael Curtis, Fiction Editor, The Atlantic Monthly