“Cherry is a miracle of literary serendipity, a triumph.... [Walker’s] language, relentlessly profane but never angry, simmers at the level of morose disappointment, something like Holden Caulfield Goes to War.... His prose echoes Ernest Hemingway’s cadences to powerful effect.... Cherry is written without an ounce of self-pity by an author allergic to the meretricious poetry of despair. In these propulsive pages, Walker draws us right into the mind of an ordinary young man beset by his own and his country’s demons. In the end, his only weapon against disintegration is his own devastating candor.” (The Washington Post)

“The rare work of literary fiction by a young American that carries with it nothing of the scent of an MFA program.... The voice Walker has fashioned has a lot in common with the one Denis Johnson conjured for his masterpiece Jesus’ Son..... A novel of searing beauty.” (Vulture)

“[An] unforgettable mix of doomed and dazzling.... There’s a vivid, repulsive truth in the way Walker renders his subjects - a sort of social truth, stripped of morality, which is rare and riveting when it comes to the subjects of opioid addiction, intimate everyday cruelty, and endless, meaningless war.” (The New Yorker)

“A singular portrait of the opioid epidemic.... [Walker] writes dialogue so musical and realistic you’ll hear it in the air around you.” (The New York Times Book Review)