“Throughout the collection, the author takes a precise and compassionate approach to storytelling, creating sentences that build tension through a combination of poetic description and direct confrontation. The recurring water imagery and reflective and mirage motifs establish a dreamlike connection between stories. The work reads like a slow Florida tide—receding into silence before returning with quiet, devastating power.”

“Reading Frances Nevill’s beautiful stories awakens a new emotion with every turn. You immerse yourself happily and with anticipation. Ultimately, the experience is both rarified and familiar, like going on an adventure but coming home too. When the time comes to leave, you want to stay for more.”

“Frances Nevill’s voice is as crystal clear as the Florida Springs. She brings us a multitude of lost characters from a recovering alcoholic whose airboat dies on a dark night in a tunnel of mangroves, to a young wife learning to navigate life without her husband. All are adrift without landmarks, real or imagined, and in the end it is dead reckoning that guides them home. Like the intricate root systems of the mangroves, Nevill’s stories, these characters dig deep to anchor themselves in an ever-changing world. Coquina Soup was exactly what I needed to feed my soul—a heaping dose of hope and a reminder of the beauty that is our Florida. This book is a gorgeous, inspiring debut.”