“A powerful book… . Everything feels transient, dreamy, and thinly rooted in the sandy soil, amid the palmettos and shotgun shacks, with hard times bearing down like a tropical hurricane.”—The New Yorker

“An engrossing memoir of American dreaming and financial devastation.”—Mother Jones

“[Reyes’s] impressive effort stands as a wrenching chronicle of our new hard times.”—Publishers Weekly

“A compelling combination of memoir, history and reportage from one of the states hardest hit by the housing collapse.”—BookPage

“Exiles in Eden is engaging, insightful, compassionate, and often charmingly idiosyncratic.”—Booklist

“The housing crash is a story littered with subprime mortgages, collateralized debt swaps, government bail-outs and financial fraud. It is also populated with a lot of real people who got in real trouble and lost their dreams. Exiles in Eden tells their story.”—Miami Herald

Paul Reyes is the editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. Prior to joining VQR, he was senior editor at the Oxford American. His essays, criticism, and reporting have appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times, the Guardian, Mother Jones, Slate, and other publications. He is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship in nonfiction from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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