“Ginnah Howard's raw, vivid account of addiction and codependency unflinchingly explores the vast darkness of guilt and despair. The stark, urgent voices of mother and son ache with anger and love, fear and hope. Howard's ability to dive so deep into the human psyche is a testament to her grace and compassion as a writer. Night Navigation will leave you breathless—a haunting, riveting debut.”

— Kiara Brinkman, author of
    Up High in the Trees

“In this bold debut, Ginnah Howard navigates the precarious lives of her people with searing compassion and devastating honesty, opening our hearts to the dark wonder of shared grief and the flickering hope of forgiveness. Mark and Del Merrick's harrowing journey reminds us there is love beyond death, mercy in the flight of birds, and joy in the wake of sorrow.”

— Melanie Rae Thon, author of
     Sweethearts

“I fully enjoyed and admired this sparely written, unsparing portrait of a deeply troubled American family. Ginnah Howard is a wonderful new writer.”

— Hilma Wolitzer, author of
     Summer Reading

Starred review...“Howard’s strength, besides lapidary language, is the ability to build scenes around quotidian activities: starting a wood stove, cleaning, walking a dog, cooking chili and, in a pivotal segment, plotting to banish a large colony of attic-dwelling bats. The red tape and repetitiveness of coping with an addicted adult child fuels suspense as the most pressing question persists: Will Del ever be free of the onus, even just in memory, of caring for all the tormented men in her life? Such stark scenarios will be cathartic for readers who have dealt with them firsthand, and profoundly cautionary for those who haven’t. ”

— Kirkus Review (3/1/09)

“Junkies, cons, brothers, sons, mothers, lovers—how can Ginnah Howard know all these sorts so inwardly, so passionately well and weave together their lives so suspensefully? Hers is a tour de force of the most valuable, the most poetic, the hardest earned insights—those that are intensely felt, imagined, lived. I don't recall ever having been so struck by a first novel before.”

— Matt Leone, Director
    Colgate Writers’ Conference

“A gritty, unblinking, compassionate portrait of addiction—the deceptions, the exhausting repetitions, and most of all the agonizing dilemmas of parental love, which may or may not have the power to save but can never stop trying.”

— Joan Wickersham, author of the
     National Book Award Finalist,
     The Suicide Index

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