Through candent, gossamer prose and a rich, tactile sense of historical detail, Child of Light casts a shadowplay across the mind; a waft of arcing smoke rorschaching between science and mysticism, truth and memory, innocence and experience. In Ambrétte, Jesi Bender has crafted an intimate portrait of female adolescence that evokes authors as disparate as Georges Bernanos and Carson McCullers, and in her story a reminder that familial dysfunction, and the human will to persevere, are novel inventions older than electricity itself.

– Dave Fitzgerald, author of Troll