In 11 striking but familiar-feeling stories, Watts binds together a tapestry of familial and personal disappointment, creating a sense of isolation and longing, shot through with surprising humor. In the title story, a young girl watches as her father's world is turned inside out by a young babysitter who brings home three puppies. We don't heart dogs, she observes. In Unassigned Territory, which won a Pushcart Prize, a teenager questions her future as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, while wittily documenting the people she meets in her ministry, and learns a lesson from her field-service partner's plea not to wait on life. Watts' accomplished collection, her first book, is genuinely sensitive in its portrayal of southern black characters, mostly women, locked into place by relationships, faith, and prisons both literal and emotional. Though most of the characters look back on events from a distance with clearer understanding now of past circumstances, there is a real immediacy here, making Watts a talent to watch.--Jones, Courtney Copyright 2010 Booklist

In a strong debut, Watts chronicles in 11 stories the lives of black North Carolinians who come from or lived near the "dark houses out on tangled dirt roads on the fringes of the county." Bright and witty 18-year-old Jehovah's Witness Stephanie (Watts was formerly a Jehovah's Witness minister) preaches door-to-door in the Pushcart Prize-winning "Unassigned Territory" and contemplates whether "To serve Jehovah during my youth (which, by the way, is the surprising twist ending to our magazine, Making the Most of Your Youth) or to go to college." The choices aren't so stark for Shelia, who in "Black Power" navigates widening gulfs between herself and her business-student fiance, Polo, and Wendy, another black woman marooned with her as a customer support operator in the National Kennel Club cubicles. A real emotional connection comes in a surprising form when she gets a call from a drug dealer who needs papers for his dachshund. In Watts's South, people are trapped, by relationships, jobs, and flaws in their character, which can lead to a trap of a different sort: incarceration. And not everyone (nor everything) makes it out alive. As the bereft narrator of the title story declares, the kind of love found in the Carolina hills-and in these stories-"demands tribute." (Nov. 30) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Watts made quite a splash in the literary world with No One Is Coming To Save Us, described as The Great Gatsby set in rural North Carolina and the inaugural selection of the American Library Association's Book Club Central. Originally published in 2011, her debut short collection is equally as impressive, having won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and been named one of the Best Summer Reads by O: The Oprah Magazine. These short stories read like novellas as we learn of a black Jehovah's Witness missionary struggling with sexual desire, a young drifter who's excited about her travels, or Aunt Ginny, who has grown from an idyllic young woman into a jaded and wise mother figure. Verdict What is lovely about these stories is that Watts can take a few words and paint a landscape that reveals so much richness about the people and culture. Similar to Pearl Cleage's Brass Bed and Other Stories, this collection will appeal to readers of Southern and African American fiction.-Ashanti L. White, Fayetteville, NC © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.