“A richness of energy and incident, an attention to the peculiarities of character . . . La Chapelle’s writing is authentic and moving.” —Louise Erdrich, The San Francisco Chronicle [on House of Heroes]

“La Chapelle is adept at capturing the sights and sounds of the [Great Lakes] region. But what she captures best of all is her characters’ abiding, almost gloomy, sense of morality . . . In ‘Faith,’ the book’s final and most compelling story, La Chapelle creates a wonderful, complicated, and charismatic character in Tiffany, an unstable teenager who thrives on her own blend of make-believe and Catholicism.” —Kirkus Reviews [on House of Heroes]

“Mary La Chapelle, a cool and compassionate voice from the Midwest, comes as a refreshing novelty these days when so much new fiction is self-absorbed and stylistically derivative. Her lack of pretension, her honesty, her eye for the odd and illuminating detail, her humor, and interest in the idiosyncratic behavior of others so different from herself, all presented in smooth narratives, indicate the arrival of a substantial talent.” —PEN/Nelson Algren Award, Judges’ Citation (Donald Barthelme, Roger Groening, Toni Morrison) [on House of Heroes]