Praise for Welcome to Utopia

“There's nothing "small" about Karen Valby's majestic and life-affirming look at a small town.  With a documentarian's eye and a poet's soul, she unveils the complete and compelling history of not just a dot on a map, but of the human heart and soul. Welcome to Utopia is a first book like To Kill a Mockingbird was a first book. It is, in the most modest phrasing I can think of, a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction."
—Augusten Burroughs, best-selling author of Running With Scissors

"The characters, the town, and the landscape in Welcome to Utopia are so perfectly drawn, they seem as near to me as my own neighbors. Karen Valby is a writer of astonishing talent, and she has given us the record of a rich and vanishing world in this book."
—Haven Kimmel, best-selling author of A Girl Named Zippy

“… a rich portrait of a community, bound by tradition and grief, sickness and success, and most of all, a commitment to one another….Valby, in turn, has repaid them in kind, as her literary portrait of them sits comfortably on the bookshelf next to other classic works about the culture of small-town America, including Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show. Of course, those works were fiction. This, as the denizens of Utopia would no doubt tell you, is something altogether more powerful and important: real life.”  
—Dallas Morning News

"Slowly, as talented journalists do, Valby won some trust. Her reporting is deep, the tone intimate. Readers are quite likely to absorb the rural Texas pulse from the pages." 
—Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Valby digs deep into the heartland, reporting tragedy....and documenting the ingrained racism and ignorance with the same clear-eyed sensitivity and passion that she calls on to illustrate the deep family bonds and lifelong friendships she encounters — the way small-town people take care of each other." 
—San Antonio Express News

 “A deftly executed look at the stereotype of a one-horse town and its residents’ modest aspirations and wearisome realities…Valby eschews a wide lens, zooming in on individuals and trusting that their words and actions will render the larger picture.” 
—Texas Monthly