L. I. Henley, Whole Night Through, What Books Press, 2019
L. I. Henley’s work employs exquisite poetry accented by prose asides and brilliant imagery to reveal the haunting interiors of eight richly imagined characters. As we become familiar with each voice, we travel their full, dynamic arcs, their memories, longings, and moments of truth. And most importantly, we know them through their relationships to one another and a central story. We discover also how an original sin can cast a long shadow across the pages of a book, “It was a sin. / What they did / in the shed.” And we experience how scar-crossed loves can entwine like serpents.
Henley’s work evokes emotional responses, not unlike the blues or a dark, slow country ballad that arrives like an old lover, Peggy Lee, Loretta Lynn, and Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight.” This is a book that uses the entire keyboard, violence that hammers the bass keys, dark notes that call us to reminisce, love so hungry it consumes itself, love like a horse’s bridal – the breaking of something untamed – and the cost of being broken. This too is a story of young Marines deployed to the Middle East and how the war follows them home. L. I. Henley’s Whole Night Through is for people who savor language as well as its poignant absences.
- Greg Gilbert, author of Afflatus
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Previous Books by L. I. Henley:
Starshine Road Desert With A Cabin View These Friends These Rooms
As a writer I feels you should allow your characters to become whatever they want. By this I mean, don't make your say what you want them to say, instead, have them say what sounds natural for them to say.
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