Press & Recognition

  • I read large swaths of Poor Your Soul, breathless, tears held (mostly) at bay, that feeling like someone was standing on my throat. Not because it is unbearably sad (though it's sad) but because it was telling me something true about being human.

    - Diane Cook, Author of The New Wilderness, and Man V. Nature 

  • Who doesn’t like a good ghost story? And in Camp Etna, the 143-year-old Spiritualist summer retreat located in the Maine hinterland just west of Bangor, author Mira Ptacin has found a whopping good one.... Ms. Ptacin’s depiction of Camp Etna’s residents—a ‘quirky underworld of fringe characters’ and ‘their truth’—is both nonjudgmental and, pardon the pun, dead-on.

    - The Wall Street Journal

  • Ptacin has a curious, warm, nonjudgmental tone about her, and she’s funny, too. She makes for delightful company.

    - The New York Times

  • An eye-opening, consistently fascinating, and engrossing profile of the modern spiritualist movement.

    - Kirkus Reviews, on The In-Betweens

  • Poor Your Soul is an important entry into the canon of the modern female experience—unflinching and specific, Ptacin examines love, grief, family and personhood with clear eyes and an open heart.

    - Emma Straub, author, and founder of Books Are Magic

  • Vivacity of spirit, pungency and accuracy of observation, and a sharp, disabused, but nevertheless empathetic consciousness permeate her pages. Ptacin soothes us, but she also, always, surprises.

    - Vijay Seshadri, Recipient of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

  • Poor Your Soul takes us on a rich and vivid journey about the meaning of family with all its pain and comfort, loss and solace. Mira Ptacin writes with exceptional honesty and beauty, and I was deeply moved.

    - Lily King, author of Heart the Lover and Euphoria

  • The Maine-based author immersed herself in the community, and her reportage reflects equal amounts of diligent journalism and wide-eyed fascination. . . . Both thrilling and unsettling. . . . In appropriately affable and accessible prose, the author describes what separates spiritualists from more common American religious traditions. . . . An eye-opening, consistently fascinating, and engrossing profile of the modern spiritualist movement.

    - Kirkus Reviews: starred review 9/1/19

  • Writing about her time spent in the company of the mediums of Camp Etna during its 141st summer in operation, Ptacin reflects on spiritualism place in an  increasingly secular culture, the changes and controversies in the camp management, and the nature of faith itself. But this is as much a meditation on healing as a history of a spiritualist camp. With great empathy and insight, Ptacin shows how spiritualist practices have aided the healing process in the lives of its practitioners, followers, and in Ptacin herself. A colorful, quirky, and ultimately moving look at a misunderstood faith and the iron-willed women who continue to sustain it.

    - Library Journal: review, 9/13/19

  • A fascinating look at the history and cultural influence of Camp Etna, the 143-year-old Spiritualist community in Maine. . . . Ptacin, who is receptive to the spiritual experiences and stories of the community, delivers her narrative evenhandedly and with genuine curiosity. This is an eye-opening and informative peek into a little- known but influential community.

    - Publishers Weekly: starred review, 9/23/19 

  • Enchanting . . . . Ptacin locates the roots of Spiritualism and traces the rise and decline of this female-dominated world that challenged institutions of the 19th- century patriarchy, offered comforting connection with the dead, and supported both abolition and suffrage. Blending history and her firsthand experience, Ptacin summons the spirits of this rich past and conveys the emotional needs it has satisfied over the years.

    - The National Book Review: 10/1/19

  • Engaging. . . . [Ptacin] is on a quest to understand the peculiar nature of belief, the power of faith – pure, unquestioning and even unreasoning – to shape the way we see the world around us. . . . This is a place and a story rooted in the very human hope that life is more than a handful of years on a lonely planet. And that if we believe hard enough we may find proof of that, shining in the shadows, just beyond our reach.

    - New York Times Book Review

  • Who doesn’t like a good ghost story? And in Camp Etna, the 143-year-old Spiritualist summer retreat located in the Maine hinterland just west of Bangor, author Mira Ptacin has found a whopping good one. . . . Ms. Ptacin’s depiction of Camp Etna’s residents—a ‘quirky underworld of fringe characters’ and ‘their truth’—is both nonjudgmental and, pardon the pun, dead-on.

    - Wall Street Journal

  • Rather than recognize the validity of women’s agency through institutions, society or capital, American Spiritualism elevated the status of women through their gut impressions as well as an emphasis on observation and intuition. ‘That’s the major thing I learned from them. And I think that’s what I really wanted to learn,’ Ptacin notes. Beyond simply recovering history. ‘This was worth investing my time to make this a book.’ The In-Betweens is a powerful book about listening to yourself and finding faith there—beyond doctrine, belief in everlasting life, with or without engagement with religion or God.

    - The Observer

  • Compelling and immersive.

    -Harvard Review

  • Ptacin approaches her subjects with a mind that is both open and enthusiastic without ever losing her keen reporter's edge. It's a brilliant work and fabulous read.

    - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love and The Last American Man

  • A small miracle of empathy, beauty, and clear-eyed wonder

    -Emily Flake, The New Yorker

  • Deft, immersive, and smart.

    - Susan Orlean

  • Fascinating.

    - Publisher's Weekly (starred review) 

  • The In-Betweens captures its own chaotic energy — a flawed community of colorful characters whose generational or ideological differences can usually be smoothed over in the name of healing, belonging, and walking your cat.

    - NPR