Leesa Cross-Smith’s Debut Novel ‘Whiskey And Ribbons’ A Fugue Of Narrators

“Whiskey And Ribbons,” the debut novel from Leesa Cross-Smith, uses three separate narrators to tell their collective story.

The narrators include Eamon, a police officer, now deceased; Dalton, Eamon’s brother; and Evangiline, who was married to Eamon and recently gave birth to their child. Cross-Smith explains to City Lights host Lois Reitzes that when she set out to write the book, she wasn’t quite sure how to structure the book.

“I ended up structuring it as a fugue,” she says. “Which I came to find out, was to a composer, to write it as a piece of music, which means to take three voices and one of the voices drops out.”