“Bensko’s deceptively simply style draws readers in almost unawares until there is suddenly no escape from his stories’ radiance.” —Nashville Scene

“The tales in Sea Dogs are conventional American short stories, Southern division, dedicated to quick revelation of character, an untangling of the past as it bleeds into the present, and reflections of the sort of grotesque and gothic effects that give weird resonance to the fiction of such writers as William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor.” —Memphis Commercial Appeal

“All of the stories evoke an atmosphere of sea lore and lure the reader to an always thought-provoking resolution.” —Library Journal

“Imaginative and deeply attuned to the resonance of myth and metaphor, Bensko constructs concise dramas in which the banal collides with the ineffable, and people experience abrupt and transfiguring change.” —Booklist

“The ongoing sense of mystery is the strength of the collection, which provides no easy answers in exploring the loss and aimlessness that pervades these people’s lives.” —Publishers Weekly