Ruth Galm’s spare, poetic debut novel, set in the American West of early Joan Didion, traces the drifting path of a young woman caught between generations as she skirts the law and her own oppressive anxiety. — Soho Press
“Mesmerizing … Galm’s writing mimics the hyperreality of dreams, and the novel’s penetrative heat is palpable … Underpinning Into the Valley is a subtle and complicated exploration of what it means to be a woman and, more specifically, what it means to be a woman without a man.” — ELLE
“Galm’s debut is precisely written and casually paced. A standout debut.” — Publishers Weekly, starred, boxed review; “Writer to Watch: Fall 2015”
“Galm’s writing is rich and evokes the desolation of the Central Valley and B.’s mental state. Readers [will] appreciate Galm’s fantastic writing and the new view of an overexposed slice of American History.” — Kirkus Reviews
“In the luxury vehicle of her hypnotically evocative prose, Ruth Galm takes us on the journey of the mysterious B., suffering from a mysterious malaise which can only be relieved by forging checks in cool, neutral banks. Like Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, Into the Valley creates and recreates a wasted American landscape, and pulls us into a world whose emptiness has profound moral and social implications.” — Mary Gordon
“Into the Valley is at once gorgeous and restrained; the character is herself a kind of vivid, shifting landscape, just as the landscape is itself a beguiling, dominating character. The result is an intensely emotional and human novel.” — Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
“I reveled in a delicious state of unease reading Into the Valley, the parched atmosphere leaving me as dizzy as the protagonist, perfectly and simply known as “B.” An enthralling, disturbing read … Galm stuns with this eerie, suspenseful ride of a novel. I loved this book.” — Paula Bomer, author of The Stalker
“ … [E]vokes the desolate interior landscape of writers such as Joan Didion.” — San Jose Mercury News
“Riveting debut novel … Terse, vivid, and heavily atmospheric … ” — “6 Books You Need to Read This August,” Los Angeles Magazine
“This is a natural for anyone who loves Joan Didion’s work–especially her nonfiction critiques on California and that other classic of aimless driving, Play It as It Lays.” — Booklist, starred review
“Galm, in a similar fashion to Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, has powerfully captured a woman’s righteous resistance in the face of a rapaciously gendered society.” — KQED Arts
“Ruth Galm’s hyper-vigilant and engrossing debut novel, Into the Valley, is both unsettling and, ultimately, victorious. From this novel’s simple opening sentence to its concise, shocking and surprising conclusion, it is a gorgeous, lyrical meditation … brilliantly drawn.” — Cincinnati City Beat
“[S]killfully whispered social commentary … Into the Valley is highly visual, suspenseful and appropriately grim. Galm’s prose touches down lightly, like a small stone bounding down a scree slope … ” — High Country News
“Readers will find it difficult to set aside Into the Valley, even after they are done with it. Truly mesmerizing … Contemporary literary fiction at its best.” — New York Journal of Books
“It’s the holy sacrament of aloneness rendered in prose as chilling as it is spooky. [B.’s] world is one that fans of latter-day Cormac McCarthy might appreciate.” — Dead Darlings blog
— Top Five 2015 Staff Pick, Kepler’s Bookstore