Prewitt cleverly and impressively balances multiple genres throughout the book, combining literary fiction, fantasy, and a bit of enjoyable fever dream…When We Were Murderous Time-Traveling Women is brimming with love. In fact, it often reads like a love letter to New Orleans. Prewitt captures the life of the city, invoking structures, streets, sounds, feelings, and even Mardi Gras. It’s quite apparent that this is a writer who knows the soul of the city. 

—Bradley Sides, Chapter 16, Tennessee Humanities. 

The magic and majesty of New Orleans is on full display in this brilliant piece that weaves intrigue, ancestral magic, and acceptance of our own checkered histories. The blend of past and present combined with beautiful prose is spellbinding, and holds you close from start to finish.

—J. D. Marcey, author of Exodus Missed

Exhilarating. The journey, an unexpectedly concrete one through dreams and relationships past, takes the reader not only into the wonder of a person’s inner life, but through the city of New Orleans itself. And that’s not half shabby, even without the time traveling grandmothers, the pretender to the French throne, the odd dead rat, and a heroine struggling with her own murderous rage. That rage is the rage of women everywhere, and there’s a road map here of how to transform it in the end. Pure visionary fiction.

—Tod Davies, editorial director of Exterminating Angel Press and author of The History of Arcadia visionary fiction series

What I’ve long admired about Ellen Morris Prewitt’s writing is fourfold: a boundless imagination, a careful devotion to language, exceptional sensory detail, and pure fearlessness. All those qualities are on full display in this new book which cements her position as one of our best storytellers. Throw in a few unforgettable characters thriving and surviving against a backdrop of troubled history and deep South landscape, and you have an unforgettable novel. We get to meet the narrator’s grannies—Tip-Top, Bigmama, and Elfy—summoned for their assistance with a tricky situation. And maybe that’s the moral of this story: that our pasts and our predecessors are always there with us, waiting just an incantation away.

—Dr. Randy Mackin, Editor-in-Chief, Porchlight: A Journal of Southern Literature

What an imagination! Ellen Morris Prewitt has created a unique story that will surprise from the very first page. In rich, descriptive language, the author delivers a whirlwind adventure that unfolds in enchanting New Orleans. There are plenty of plot twists, and rest assured expectations will be subverted. But it’s the drawing of the characters that holds much of the novel’s humor and warmth. These are interesting folk from interesting times, each with their own quirks. You’ll love getting to know them.This is a novel about magic. Not the abracadabra type so much, but the magic of discovery and, as a result, self-discovery. Oh, and how awesome our grannies are, especially the murderous ones.

—Gordon Haynes, Catching Souls for Beelzebub

I love everything about this book. I want to eat it with a spoon.

— Marisa Whitsett Baker, avid reader and former bookseller: