In the citation, Allan Gurganus wrote, "Moira Crone is a fable maker with a musical ear, a plenitude of nerve, and epic heart."

"[2] The novel set in Baltimore in the late 70's tells of "the confinement of Alma Taylor, a young artist, begins when she falls in love; then she gets pregnant, marries and finally flees to New York."

Publishers Weekly found "much to savor in this small, deeply affecting novel, written in the voice of a woman who abandons her baby and husband in a depressed, confused postpartum "period of confinement."

The New York Times Book Review praised her "fresh version of the Deep South, one that is exotic without being either grotesque or romanticized" and reported that "the sensibility embodied in Ms. Crone's energetic fiction ...is utterly sui generis.

Like the works of Flannery O'Connor, this collection transcends the genre of "Southern Literature" and probes deeply into the paradoxes of the psyche and the zeitgeist of modern America...Crone has the lyric touch of a poet and the visionary spirit of a mystic, conjuring images that are both disturbing and startlingly beautiful.

The reader will never forget Claire McKenzie's last memory of her mother or Sidney Byrd's symbolic dream about her dead friend Pauline or Lily Stark's stunning vision that closes this collection.

[6] Reviewer Greg Langley wrote: "... What Crone has combined is wry social commentary in the vein of Swift or Voltaire with a dystopian coming-of-age tale.

Moira Crone has been selected for an individual artist's grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, (1990) and a fellowship at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College at Harvard, (1987–1988.)