“Jennifer Sinor’s big-hearted novel The Beautiful Plain movingly portrays a life haunted by guilt over an act of childhood cruelty, and the power of love to redeem the past.”—Ladette Randolph, author of Private Way, Haven’s Wake, and A Sandhills Ballad

“A study in guilt, grief, and reawakening, The Beautiful Plain examines the bifurcation that comes from the suppression of our shadow selves. Through fragmented recollections—ancestral diaries, personal memories, and traumatic stories of war—Jennifer Sinor interrogates what it means to know and not know, to see and not see, to blindly box ourselves in while the wild world goes on without us, as well as the courage and community it takes to turn and face the refining fire of our own agency.”—Kim Barnes, author of In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize