Praise for Monday, Monday

"The Austin campus is... the locale for the precise and harrowing beginning of Elizabeth Crook’s “Monday Monday.” An ordinary coed named Shelly Maddox has just left class on an August day in 1966 and is deciding whether to have a Coke or a Sego diet drink when Charles Whitman targets her from the top of the UT tower. The rest of the novel tracks the next 40 years of Shelly’s life, matching the action of that unforgettable opening chapter with equally compelling scenes of emotional turmoil and insight."
—The Wall Street Journal

"How could he put into words what it was like to hold someone who was bleeding to death?" wonders a character in Crook's intensely imagined novel…The story unfurls simply and smoothly, with a quiet insistence much like the path the characters will take. Crook renders Shelly's life delicately and fully, and artfully conveys her many moments of panic and anguish."
—Publisher's Weekly

"Framing a story in the context of calamity—in this instance, mass murder—invites both sensationalism and sentimentality; there have been few memorable successes, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed among them. Add Crook’s latest to the plus side of the list….confident and lyrical as it smartly engages terror and its aftermath."
—Kirkus, Starred review | Read full review

"....a vivid portrayal of resolve in the face of great tragedy."
—Booklist

"Love, loss, redemption, forgiveness—all are expertly drawn in a narrative that is so very authentic and generous. Crook skillfully weaves together several compelling stories through her close attention to the Texas setting. VERDICT The sensitively explored themes of adoption and coping with violence should create interest in this rich and satisfying tale."
—Library Journal | Read full review

"Crook puts a microscope up to the most intimate moments, then pulls back to give beautiful and heartbreaking broad strokes to the lives of all three main characters and the families. [She] examines big questions: What makes a hero? What makes a family? How do you make peace with a traumatic past? Each character has their own journey to search for answers to those questions, and Crook leaves room for readers to wrestle with the questions as well. The story is heartbreaking at moments, but Crook does weave in some comic relief by the end to offset the emotional intensity."
—CBC News | Read full review

“This rapturous novel starts with one of the most heinous shootings in history, yet every page shines with life. Crook follows three students who endured the tragedy as they grapple with the past, struggle to navigate their futures, and discover that who and what saves us is nothing like what you imagine. Brilliantly realized and so vivid the novel seems to virtually breathe, Monday, Monday is a stunning achievement.’
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You

“Elizabeth Crook has written an extraordinary novel—an eloquent love story born from an act of random violence, a tale of destruction and redemption. It’s about making a whole life out of a damaged one, and about holding on and letting go. The characters are as real as people you know; their story is subtle, startling, and wise.”
—Sarah Bird, author of The Yokota Officers Club and Above the East China Sea

“Monday, Monday begins by throwing us into the midst of one of the worst mass murders in American history, a scene painted with such harrowing exactitude that it leaves you wondering how the characters can possibly survive and how the author can possibly sustain such a high level of narrative momentum and emotional insight. And yet Elizabeth Crook pulls it off. This is a brilliant and beautiful book.”
—Stephen Harrigan, author of The Gates of the Alamo and Remember Ben Clayton

"In Monday, Monday, Elizabeth Crook uses vivid, gripping prose and in-depth historical research to shed light on one of the darkest moments in Texas history—that sadly still has relevance today—by detailing the fictional lives of three survivors caught in the crosshairs….The feeling of longing—to delve deeper, to answer unanswerable questions and to know what might have been had their lives not been forever altered—is a constant presence throughout the book…"
—Tommie Ethington, The Rivard Report | Read full review & interview

"Acclaimed historical novelist Elizabeth Crook — who’s written novels about Sam Houston and early Texas — takes three fictional people who were there that hot day in Austin and creates a picture of the era and relationships that will enthrall even the most jaded observer of the 1960s…"
—David Kinchen, HuntingtonNews.net | Read full review

"My journey through the pages of MONDAY, MONDAY was not what I expected. But it was a journey I’m glad to have taken. It’s a vivid reminder of how one brief moment in time can impact lives for decades and generations, making Elizabeth Crook’s latest a brilliant, beautiful and vividly told novel."
—Stuart Shiffman, BookReporter.com | Read full review

"An ambitious tale that explores the bond among survivors and the ways that seminal events in our lives continue to shape us long after they’re over… Crook's exploration of Whitman's massacre and its lingering effects will have relevance for years to come."
—Dallas Morning News

"The tale unwinds like an examination of the ripple effect… As readers, we have the benefit of sitting in the sand and watching them break on the shoreline….This story is the antithesis to the diagram published in the pages of Time magazine shortly after the shooting. Crook forsakes the aerial view and brings your cheek right on down to the scalding pavement."
—Austin Chronicle | Read full review

"…[E]loquent...“Monday Monday” opens with a random, hideous act, but thankfully the novel isn't about that moment or the gunman. The shooting sets in motion an entire lifetime of relationships; from an act of violence springs love, friendship, loss, forgiveness and survival.
Crook's writing shimmers with life... [The story] explores the complex messiness of being human and the ways in which even the best intentions can create consequences both hurtful and beautiful. It's intense and emotional, but never maudlin….The scenery looms large, but this is story painted on a canvas much larger than the state. Crook has created a gorgeous, worthy and entirely believable read."
—San Antonio Express-News | Read full review

"Beautifully written...The book is a complex tale about overcoming fear and the risks and power of love...And it is the story of the compromises we all make to get by in this imperfect world. Part of what makes this book so compelling is the open and tender way each character is honestly but lovingly portrayed. ...A wonderful book that will make you cry, but also uplift you."
—BookPage | Read full review

"Monday, Monday explores the lives of characters who act—or don’t—in the face of tragedy, and it implicitly asks readers to ponder how their own lives might have been different if they’d just left home for work a few seconds earlier, or later; if they’d stopped for coffee on the way; if they’d said yes to that date, or no to that other one; if they’d picked up the phone, or answered that email. How much of our lives are choice, and how much chance? With Monday, Monday, Crook taps into the truth that the answer is some of both.
—The Texas Observer | Read full review

"...a multi-generational story about what it means to go on after tragedy, and about the ways in which tragedy can bind people together, for better or worse. The novel is rich in detail and grand in scope, and examines an often forgotten chapter in American history: the first-ever campus mass shooting. It’s sure to satisfy historical fiction buffs everywhere, and provide a unique perspective on an event that, sadly, is no longer unique...Monday, Monday is a look at a tragedy that is rarely mentioned anymore, but in today’s world full of mass shootings, it remains more relevant than ever, showing how chance can alter a person’s destiny forever, and how tragedy can reverberate not just through one life, but through generations."
—Bustle.com | Read full review

"Crook paints strong and appealing characters just as vividly as she describes the Texas landscapes that they travel through. Monday, Monday is immediately gripping and wholly compelling — and it’s fiction at its finest. Crook takes a real event and zooms in, creating an imaginative space to explore the hard questions tragedies like the UT tower shootings beg: what are the less obvious wounds a tragedy inflicts on those involved? How does it alter the course of their lives? How do we move forward in the face of tragedy, or are we forever bound by it?"
—Culturemap | Read full review

"Far more people remember the Mamas and Papas than Charles Whitman. But this was a singular event in the troubled ’60s, described by some as America’s first modern-day, peacetime, mass shooting on public soil.

Elizabeth Crook has woven a novel, of all things, out of that day’s tragedy, and before you scoff at that notion, consider that this is an extremely effective way to get into the minds of random victims of mass shootings.…

The University of Texas shootings, of course, came long before CNN and the Internet. If a tragedy of that magnitude occurred today, we’d be subjected to thousands of interviews and essays and psychological profiles about the victims and what they went through.

But all that coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, even the most artful and inspiring stories about the Boston Strong victims, provide no more insights than this book does about the inner thoughts and bonds created when madmen reach out to destroy others.

So this book, recast as a novel about a mass murder 48 years ago this summer, may help explain the mindsets of surviving victims from Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and the like."
—The Buffalo News | Read full review

"Crook gets at what makes people act–and what makes them stall, and the ramifications of choice versus chance. Love, infidelity, heartbreak and unabashed joy trickle down through four generations...The emotional insights are like fireworks, and the story feels lived rather than written. Go read it."
—Great New Books | Read full review

"MONDAY, MONDAY, the latest novel by Austin’s Elizabeth Crook and winner of the Texas Institute of Letters’s Jesse H. Jones fiction award for 2014, is only nominally about Charles Whitman’s sniper attack from the tower on the University of Texas Austin campus in 1966; it could’ve been any horrific act of violence. This novel is actually about the butterfly effect (in the shape of a bullet), the long-term effects of violence on survivors, bonds forged during the aftermath, balancing conflicting responsibilities, atonement, and redemption….

The juxtaposition between the innocence of the young students – daydreaming in math class, taking lecture notes in history class – and the monstrosity of what is happening outside their classrooms (told from multiple perspectives) is remarkably powerful…. Crook peoples her story with likeable characters, ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. She is equally at home with stunning action sequences and the small comedic despairs that make up daily life."
—Lone Star Literary Life | Read full review