Wittenbergs, The

• Winner of the 2013 Margaret McWilliams Award for Popular History
• Shortlisted, 2013 High Plains Book Award for Woman Writer
• Shortlisted, 2013 Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award
• Shortlisted, 2013 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction
• Shortlisted, 2013 Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher

What a marvel of a character Sarah Klassen has created in Mia Wittenberg, an open-hearted teenager who holds a troubled family’'s past and present in her steady gaze.

Joan Thomas, author of Curiosity

In The Wittenbergs, [Sarah Klassen] uses graceful prose and a fluid story structure to explore themes of guilt, atonement, responsibility, belonging and, above all, finding meaning in a Mennonite heritage.

Kathryne Cardwell, Winnipeg Free Press

[Klassen's] writing is powerful, incredibly lyrical, and the characters hard to shake.

Elin Thordarson, The Winnipeg Review

Klassen masterfully weaves a story of a past family history with a more recent time.

Mennonite Historian

As one might expect in a novel by a poet, descriptions are sensual and minimal.

Rhubarb magazine

The novel is a kind of compilation of literary, biblical, and musical influences and inheritences; at times it almost seems to sing itself.

Journal of Mennonite Studies

Klassen has made her name as an award-winning poet; this is her first effort as a novelist. Her poetic impulse makes The Wittenbergs a lovely reading experience, with striking images...

Melanie Springer Mock, The Mennonite Quarterly Review

Delicately written, the novel weaves threads of hope into the lives of its characters.

Reece Steinberg, Canadian Literature

With acuity and detail, Klassen captures the various ways one can be both burdened and unbound by the vicissitudes of fortune and of history.

Herizons

Klassen's exquisite storytelling provokes us to care about this family, and we long to learn of their fate.

Billings Gazette