This novel is superb and immediately compelling….Johns has a terrific eye for detail, and a strong emotional intelligence.—The Times (London)

Rebecca Johns…brings a heartland perspective to "Icebergs," her impressive first novel, a traditional, gracefully told, quietly unsettling multigenerational saga.—The Chicago Tribune

Johns is totally in control of her craft, skillfully weaving the threads of two families while exploring the many faces of love, survival, parenting and loneliness. The story is filled with vibrant prose and keen observations.—The Rocky Mountain News

Rebecca Johns's tautly written debut novel looks at how [the effects of the war] lingered into the next generation, with often devastating consequences….Johns has shaped a powerful narrative about the complicated ties that bind.—The Independent (UK)

Spanning more than 50 years, Johns's assured debut is an understated saga of war, family, landscape and reverie.—The Guardian (UK)

Johns arrives at effectively moving moments of revelation.—The New York Times Sunday Book Review

A quietly powerful and deeply pleasurable read….Like that old iceberg, there’s much going on beneath the surface of Johns’s muted, deceptively simple prose, as well as in her character’s lives.—Nancy Pearl, Booklust

Sensible and stylish.  Rebecca Johns explores with an extraordinary sense of intimacy love and infidelity, courage and cowardice.— Schwerin People's Daily (Germany)

Deftly braiding multiple storylines, Johns meditates on war, survival and deceit, along with their domestic fallout, showing how life's near misses can exert their own hold over destiny.—The Observer (UK)

[An] exceptionally assured debut….With great subtlety, Johns shows how traits runs through families, how gestures and even fates can resurface in later generations.—The London Daily Telegraph

Appealing and well-crafted….Marked by well-paced action and complex characters, Johns' novel has all the ingredients of great literary fiction.—BookPage

Johns explores “big questions” of love, loss, survival and destiny without slipping into mawkishness.—The London Paper

This beautifully written debut novel had a lot of us here remembering Kent Haruf's Plainsong from a few years ago—it also is set in the kind of community in which everybody knows everyone else's business before they have any right to. Icebergs, though, starts off with a bang that had me breathless….John's lyrical, spare narrative follows the Dunmores and the Clarks over the next 50 years in an exploration of how, like ships navigating perilous waters, "even near-misses leave a wake, an invisible breath that moves through the air."  Secrets become icebergs, and witnessing the delicate maneuverings of these people as they try to avoid old and new pain touched me deeply.—Catherine Wallach, Editor, Book of the Month Club

Johns is ambitious enough to tell a story that spans several generations, revitalizing the wartime genre. Her meticulous presentation of details will make readers feel they are actually witnessing the events...This work has the appeal of a best seller. —Library Journal 

With stark, lovely prose, Johns weaves a delicate tapestry of linked narratives, confirming that the paths not taken can be as significant as the ones taken. Like a ship navigating around an iceberg, "even near-misses leave a wake, an invisible breath that moves through the air."—Publisher's Weekly

A deeply satisfying novel that shows how people--like icebergs--often reveal only 10 percent of themselves, while the rest remains hidden beneath the surface.—Booklist

An enormous and breathtaking debut novel, Icebergs reminds us how our fates are shaped as much by the senselessness of history and tragedies as by our most private desires and sorrows. Like the best novelists, Johns paints the landscapes of her work with masterful strokes and reveals the fragility and stoicism of her characters with the greatest tenderness and sympathy, letting their inner worlds collide with the outside, and with each other, to create this haunting and beautiful tale about human love with-and despite-death, loss, deceit and misunderstanding.—Yiyun Li, author of The Vagrants and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant, and one of The New Yorker's 20 Under 40.

Rebecca Johns is a beautiful storyteller.—Jennifer Haigh, author of Baker Towers and Mrs. Kimble, winner of the PEN/Hemingway award

In her wise, luminous debut spanning generations, Rebecca Johns has given us a great gift of a book. You won't soon forget this constellation of characters, nor the riveting story of two families bound and altered by war.—Kate Walbert, author of The Gardens of Kyoto and Our Kind (finalist for a National Book Award)

Johns unpeels the layers of her heartbreaking first novel with all the patience and confidence of a master. Her two families, thrust together by tragedy, united by love and suspicion, never let the hardness of the world prevent them from being kind. Icebergs manages to feel both epic in its scope and intimate in its fine attention to character. A debut of remarkable grace, maturity, and wisdom.—Robert Rosenberg, author of This is Not Civilization