In “Stay and Fight,” Madeline ffitch’s debut novel ... Just like the American pioneers the author might like to disown, her characters achieve independence, but fall far short of utopia.

And they're still out there today. Madeline ffitch's first novel, Stay and Fight, is about those kinds of people living in one of those kinds of towns. The character Helen, a Seattle-born ...

Ffitch’s remarkable and gripping debut novel (after story collection Valparaiso, Round the Horn) traces the journeys of a makeshift family in contemporary Appalachian Ohio. After Helen leaves ...