"The wonder of Stacy Barton's fiction is the emotional connection of her characters. There are hard, dark, vivid stories here--real and familiar situations, plenty of struggle and ambiguity as well as celebration. The central triumph is that of the author, her stories and the people in them reliably authentic all the way."

"Stacy Barton's considerable genius is that she looks at the world we all look at, but sees what the rest of us are unwilling to see. And she doesn't flinch. The disarming beauty of Surviving Nashville can be, at times, quite breathtaking. Here is the art of few words and powerful resonance. Stacy Barton's brilliant collection will haunt you. It's courageous, honest and smart."

"Stacy Barton's stories tug at the cozy blankets around my mind and soul. She makes me think long, hard thoughts with her spare yet lovely prose. I am a voyeur, a gaper, hungering for more with each vignette."

"Stacy Barton's stories fly from dark to light and back again in depicting the human condition. Her words sing to accompany her characters in their varied journeys that touch the gamut of readers' emotions. Through it all there is the never-spelled-out but felt sense that the writer knows that beyond the dark glass she'll find Light and the answers to the unanswerables."

"Reading Surviving Nashville was like listening to the perfect album--each song complete in itself, but when you listen from beginning to end, you end up singing out all the pain and grief and love you didn't know you had in you. I love these stories that poured out of Stacy Barton's soul. In languid prose, pain and faith mix and find their voice in mothers, sisters, best friends, summers and food fried in cast iron skillets. Surviving Nashville is full of stifled cries, devastating events and moments of beauty. Each story released in me a cry of pain and the glimpse of a tiny miracle."